Last week, I published a post on how to conduct photo orders in the State Archives (if you missed it, find it again here). I promised I would follow up with a second post on how to use this information to place a photo order, how these images can be used, what we do and do not allow, and more.

So, here we go again!

As you learned in my previous post, quite a few photos can be viewed and accessed on our website. We are happy that these items can be used and viewed in this way, as it does help people researching images. But, how do you actually get the image? And what are you able to do with it once you have it?

Ordering Images

Images provided by us are part of our collections, and if we need to provide a copy, we do charge a fee.

At this time, you may order one of four types of images.

1. A watermarked thumbnail for reference, which is typically scanned at the lowest resolution with the agency name stamped across it. This is for reference to show you what is in an image that heretofore has not been scanned or posted on Digital Horizons. We do not charge for this service. (The watermarked image shown here is SHSND 10468-00357).
2. A paper print, which is typically black and white ink on white paper. For a paper printout, the clarity of the image is pretty good, but this is printed on regular printer paper, and again is just intended for research purposes. The fee is $1 per image.

3. A low resolution scan of the print or negative, such as the image shown here of President George H.W. Bush in Bismarck during the Centennial Celebration in 1989, SHSND 31843-016-00002. (The images used in our blog posts are all low resolution.) This is typically provided in a jpg format and is sized around 200 dpi or less. This indicates that you may see less specific detail, and enlarging the image makes it more pixelated. This image can probably still be sent to you in your email as an attachment without filling your inbox—kind of similar to most normal or lower resolution photos you might take on a smart phone. The fee is $8. If it suits your needs, you can download images from Digital Horizons. They are about the size of a typical low res scan, and we do not charge you for this service.

4. A high resolution scan of the print or negative. This image is probably too large to send to you as an attachment, and will likely need to be sent to you via our share site or on a disc. These comprise the majority of the photo orders we fill. They are typically sized around 600 dpi. These images are crisper, clearer, can be enlarged easier, and are considered suitable to print. Though we are capable of scanning items at a higher setting, this is typically the standard. (You can see this in this detail from photo SHSND 1952-05018, a photo by Frank Fiske of Brave Buffalo. The details of his face are still very clear and crisp. A high resolution scan fee is $20 per image.

If you want to order an image, come to the Archives in person or email or call us with the photo information. We may ask you to fill out our order form, available here on our website. Often, an email with the photo number is plenty.

The photo number consists of a collection number and item number (although letters are occasionally part of the name). They sometimes are longer and shorter, depending on what they are a part of. However, they typically look like one of these examples:

1952-00001 → 1952 is the collection, and this is the first item in that collection.

2005-P-001-00001 → 2005-P-001 is the collection, and this refers to the first item in that collection.

A0002-00001 → A is the collection; there are a series of linked images in this collection so while there may be several item numbers under this second item in the A collection, this is the first image.

10958-31B-25-00001 → This is the first photo in folder 25 of Box 31B from manuscript collection 10958 (William Shemorry). Not all manuscript numbers are as long as this one, which does differ slightly in its numbering. Most will look like a typical photo collection number and item number.

Find the photo number on Digital Horizons by scrolling down the page and selecting the item number (circled).

If you want to order an image that is not on Digital Horizons, you’ll need the photo number on our website. If the image itself is posted, this number will be found near or underneath it on our webpage or even on our Facebook posts. The photo numbers are also listed out under the photo collections, where you will see the summary of what is in the image (as in the picture below).

Once you have found this number, you can email us at archives@nd.gov (this is the preferred method), call us at 701.328.2668, or bring or mail the order form to State Archives at 612 E Boulevard Ave, Bismarck, ND 58505. You can send these orders to my attention.

We require prepayment for photo orders, so don't be surprised if you must make your payment before you get to see the image.  Once your order and payment are received, we prepare your images. Typically, they are completed within two to three weeks, but this time can vary, and it may be more or less time to complete a photo order.

Using images from the State Historical Society

While you may obtain photos from us, neither copyright nor ownership is transferred to you. These photos remain part of our collection, and copyrights remain with the donor, publisher, author, or author's heirs. So we do have rules governing use of our collections.

1. Most, but not all, of our images are available for purchasing copies and for use.
2. Images must be used respectfully. They cannot be altered or rearranged in any way (although you can use a detail of a photo and mark it as such).
3. Personal use allows images to be used privately, for personal means, or for research. No use fees or forms are required for this use beyond the original scan fee.

4. Public use means an image is used in a public area and/or potentially for profit, such as display in an office, store, restaurant, or similar building; publication in a book; or use in a documentary. This use requires patrons to fill out our one-time use form. Fees for this use are listed on our website.
5. Online use is allowed in specific ways. Images that may be posted online should be used in low resolution. If an image is posted on Facebook or a blog post or on a personal site, it must be cited as from the State Historical Society of North Dakota plus its photo number. Use fees are variable, but typically use fees are waived for online use. We may require users to fill out our one-time use form.
6. All images must be cited as being from our agency and show the full photo number. (State Historical Society of North Dakota 00001-00001 is an example citation.) This is for public use, but it is helpful to retain this number for people interested in obtaining an image for private use as well.
7. We do not allow State Archives images to be reproduced on clothing, or reproduced and sold in any other way.

Just remember, if there are ever any questions on photo use, we are here to help! Feel free to contact us at any time.

A photo is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes. Photos can also be invaluable—especially for a researcher searching for old images of family members or historic images of places and events.

We receive many requests for photographs. We have a lot to choose from—the estimate is that our collection holds around two million photos (including glass plate negatives, prints, jpgs, tiffs, and all kinds of other materials). Not all of our images are scanned, however, and not all can be viewed on our website at this time. So how can you find an image you are searching for?

Right now, you can search in a multitude of ways. While it takes a bit of looking and a little extra work, it’s not nearly as difficult as it seems. And some of it can be done from home!

1. Digital Horizons. Digital Horizons is the easiest place to start for photo searches.

This website is a conglomeration of select images from our collections, as well as other organizations around the state, such as the Institute for Regional Studies at NDSU, the Bismarck Public Library, the North Dakota State Library, and local county historical societies. Now, I did say “select.” Not all images from every institution in the state are available here. However, it’s a great place to begin any search. You can type in a keyword search in the search bar (see Advanced Search) and can even focus on specific collections. Images are here in low resolution, but you can see them, any information we may have on them, and also can find what institution they are from, as well as the photo number.

Scrolling down on this page will show necessary information as to where this image came from. To order this image, you will need the Item Number and will want to request it from the correct repository institution.

2. Photo indexes listed on our website. If you just want to know what sort of images might be available, this is a good place to start as well. You will likely not find the actual photo to look at, but most of our images are indexed and described somewhere on our website. While photo collections can exist in manuscripts and state series, and are not listed within this site, the bulk of our photos can be found in their own collections. View this at history.nd.gov/archives/photocollections.

3. Keyword searches on our website. As I noted, not all of our photos are found in photo collections. Some are listed under the finding aids of other collections. So it is indeed worth doing a keyword search throughout our website. The best ways to do this are twofold.

1. In conjunction with searching a specific page (“control-f” on your keyboard will typically pop up the search box, and then highlight whatever string of words you are interested in).
   
   
    
2. Do a keyword search across the website. You can type in keyword searches and do an in-site google search for topics. Go to history.nd.gov/archives and you will see two search bars. While you can use both, to search just the Archives collections, you will want to use the one on the lower right side for your search.
   
   

4. Search at the Archives. We do have a few other sources in the Archives that you can search. We have some paper files and some scanned jpgs that may not be available on Digital Horizons, but can only be viewed on a computer in our State Archives Reading Room. We also can help you with use our new database, Re:discovery, which allows staff to search for inter-agency topics. Eventually, Re:discovery will be accessible to the public as a search tool and will change how photos can be searched.

For now, these are your best options.

However, even when you are searching with these methods, there are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Be succinct, and try a few key words. Being too specific (E.g., “President Theodore Roosevelt visiting North Dakota in 1902”) with your query in any of these searches will limit your results. Too general (E.g., “north dakota”) will bring in too many results. Find a happy medium. (E.g., search “Roosevelt,” “Teddy,” “President visit,” and “Roosevelt visit”).
2. You can’t always see everything right away. Typically if an image is not yet scanned, I can send a small number of low-res thumbnails to individuals seeking photos, so they can see them before they order. Please remember to allow extra days for this service, as this does take time!
3. Keep the photo number on hand for ordering. The photo number is how we identify and communicate about photos. It is listed on our website, on Digital Horizons, and on the photo itself. We need this information for research and orders.

I hope this helps you find the photos of your dreams! Look for my next post to see how you can use this information to order photograph scans. You will learn how these images can be used, what we expect, what we do and don’t allow, and how to place an order.

Where do you go if you have need of book repair? Since we are an archives, and we are known for having books (North Dakota related, of course), patrons ask us this question quite frequently.

Reference Specialist Sarah Walker holds a book mid-repair process. The original binding has been removed and strengthened for when the book block will be reattached.

Although we do not repair books here at the State Archives as a service for our patrons, we do actually conduct limited in-house book repairs for some of our most heavily used and damaged books to extend their shelf life (literary pun intended!). These are patch and repair, triage-style fixes, leaving behind scars. We keep the repairs as archival quality as we can (when using tape, glue, paper, and cardboard), but this is not restoration. This is survival.

However, it can also be super fun!

Some tools of the trade are pictured here. Rubber bands; metal brushes; saws; glue; archival-quality, double-sided tape; clamps; string; paint brushes; a ruler; and a sock (used as a weight—it is filled with lead pellets) are all used in some capacity in our “workshop.” The white roll is a material called cambric, used to cover the spine and glue the book block back into the binding. We put small amounts of glue into baby food jars so we don’t have to leave larger bottles open, and then we apply glue with paintbrushes.

I learned some simple book-binding tricks and tips many years ago (or, what feels like it, anyway) from a gentleman who volunteered to teach our staff. There were several of us at the outset. Now, I am the only remaining staff member working on our books from this first instruction. However, our staff has kept the process going by working with each other and sharing the information.

Virginia Bjorness, cataloger, and Stephanie Baltzer Kom, head of technical services, are my book-binding buddies these days. We meet approximately once a month for about an hour and go through the tattered vessels that have been pulled from any of our various shelves.

We complete several steps to determine what is to be done, as not all books must be repaired equally.

First, we determine whether the book should be put into a phase box instead of going through repairs. Using a phase box will protect the book as is. There are merits to this; it will maintain some historical integrity of the object (if this is important to the book). Also, sometimes the paper is too fragile to work with, or the repairs necessary are too numerous and would not improve ease in using the book. These books need a phase box and will be set aside for that purpose.

Once the book has been determined as free-for-repair, one of us examines it. What issues does it have? Are the pages merely falling out? Is the binding tearing? Is the book pulling in half? All of these are typical problems we see quite frequently in books of every age.

Then we look at the book to see what style it is. Does it have a flat binding? Are the pages glued directly to the binding?

Head of Technical Services Stephanie Baltzer Kom displays a book with loose pages falling out.

Now it is time to fix it. Some fixes are pretty simple. For example, if a book’s pages are falling out, but the rest of the binding is fine, typically all we need to do is tip, or glue, the pages in. We apply a thin strip of glue on the binding-side edge of the page that has fallen out, as well as the following page, and then put the glue together, keeping the page as even with the rest of the book block as possible. We sometimes put strips of plastic between pages to keep them from getting glued to everything—glue is essential!

Some fixes are more time-consuming and involved. These tend to be my favorite. They frequently involve stripping the book block from the book and redoing the binding. This is more typical of books that have a rounded spine rather than a flat spine. Maybe the book block pulls out of the binding, ripping a page or two. In this instance, we might even have to apply a fix to the book block itself and tip a few pages back in, as well as work with the binding.

First, we must work with the book block. We pull the book block from the binding, put it between two bricks, and fully remove any excess materials of glue and fabric from the spine. We peel it by hand, cut it away, or even sand it. After this is done, we might be able to simply tip or glue the pages together, and then spread glue across the entire spine to make a glue binding to keep everything together. This is set aside.

Sometimes we have to restring the spine. This is my favorite part! After the book block is cleaned as best as we can, we use a small handheld saw to cut several shallow stripes into the spine of the book block. We add copious amounts of glue, again. Then we cut strings and squeeze them into those stripes. We clamp everything in place and tighten the strings. (I add more glue after this, just to be sure.) Then we let it dry. Voila! In the morning (or in the next month, when we are back together), it is just a matter of laying the block into the book, finishing up the edges, and gluing everything together.

If it is a flat spine and the binding is toast, we might use tape to recreate what was there. This is a special, much more hearty kind of tape (think duct tape in quality, leather-bound book in texture, and imagine “old library” to get the right color. Though to be honest, we mainly just have it in black.) We measure the covers and the book block, place the covers on the either edge of the tape, and tape them back to the clean, dry book block.

Left: Sarah Walker peels back fabric that must be removed before this book block can be put back into its cover.
Right: This book is clamped in place to dry. It had been torn from its binding but will soon be in one piece again.

Book repair is subjective, so we often confer with each other on these more difficult books. Sometimes we try something to see if it will work—and sometimes, we see these books return to us for more repairs. Quite frankly, we sometimes accidentally glue the pages in the wrong section, upside down, or to each other. Book repair can be complicated.

It’s also, in my opinion, a creative outlet, a stress release (especially when you get to use the saw on the book), and it is useful for maintaining readable books that our researchers can access and use.

So, to come full circle, where do patrons take their books for repair? We can brainstorm a few ideas for the patron who might prefer to send their books to a professional. However, although what we do is not preservation, and isn’t always pretty, it really does help the book survive. If any patrons would like to try their hand at repairing their own books, we are happy to provide some helpful tips. Feel free to contact us at archives@nd.gov!

It’s time for the international museum dance-off! Electronic Records Archivist Lindsay Schott and Reference Specialist Sarah Walker dance through the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

Faithful readers of this blog may recall my post from last year, about our first entry into the Museum Dance off hosted annually by the blog "When You Work At A Museum."

Well—it’s back!

This, the fifth year, is a bittersweet year for the competition. It marks the “last dance”—a final hurrah for the author of the “When You Work at A Museum” blog to host the international dance-off she created. It is silly, yes, but that’s what makes it fun—and it has allowed museum communities to show off their talents, and how awesome their staff, patrons, and collections are.

Last year, we were pretty ramped up for our music video take on “Stereo Hearts,” by Gym Class Heroes and Adam Levine. Our entry is here, if you’ve forgotten it.

This year, our dance-off mastermind director, New Media Specialist Jessica Rockeman, decided to take a different tack—a one-take wonder (more or less). The idea was this—we’d basically dance our way from one end of the building through to the other. No cuts, or as few as possible, would occur.

The beginning of the video, filled with drama and electricity. Actually, we decided on this opening pose just before we shot the scene.

Lindsay and I were once again ready and willing. A song, date, time, and place were picked. I set up some simple choreography for everyone to do together at the end. Other staff from our multiple divisions showed up to help us. And a movie was born.

Okay, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. But it did take less time, this time around.

Jess and I did several walk-throughs of the building, scouting out how we would move with the camera and each other. This was conducted sans camera, so any staff walking along saw Jess holding a phone and walking backwards, her head swiveling back and forth constantly, with me essentially skipping in front of her and stopping occasionally at different spots to dance around. Then Lindsay came with, and we repeated it all again. And again. And again.

Our goal was to cover as much ground as possible, and include as many people as we could. We started in the far end of our staff area and plotted to make our way up into the State Archives, through our three permanent galleries and ended in our grand and beautiful atrium. However, no matter what we tried, we ended up just flat-out running from one end to the other.

The following conversation is mostly true, but is slightly dramatized.

“Jess,” I gasped, “We can’t just run! We need to be able to dance!”

“Yes,” Lindsay wheezed, “we’re running the whole thing!”

“True,” Jess replied, panting. “And I’m running backwards. But we need to move from here to there. Shall we try again?”

This was our cheat. This door actually opens up into more museum, but we cut and opened in the State Archives Division—we got to take a little breather, but not for long. We probably had a minute and a half rather than half a minute, this way!

So I’ll let you in on a secret. We cheated—just a little bit! We snipped some of the employee area, and we used one cut to skip some dead hallway. Technically, we walked through one door and appeared in a different section of the building than we should have. We raced through a few other areas, and we somehow made it in time to do the dance at the end in the atrium. Our one-take, no-cut video became a one-take, one-cut video. But this way, we were able to survive the song, still dance (it is a dance-off, after all), and achieve it mostly without running. (Please note, this video or blog does not endorse running in the galleries! We have strict no-running policies. But when you work at a historical society, and you are shooting a dance-off video with caution and alacrity, it may at times appear that you are slightly bending the rules. I guess we can just call it a perk of being in this specialized field.)

We hope everyone caught the staff cameos, especially in the first few scenes! Here is one of our museum preparators, Andrew Kerr, rocking out in the Paleo lab

Really, that was it. Lots of run-throughs and crossing of fingers for extra staff, and then the grand number that you can view on our YouTube page. It was all very different from last year’s, but it had its ups and downs. In fact, Lindsay and I felt there were several pros and cons with the video.

More cameos - Archaeology Collections Assistants Meagan Schoenfelder and Brooke Morgan returned to add their flair in the Archaeology lab

Pros:

• We spent a lot less time filming this video and felt less pressure.
• We enjoyed the making of a one-cut/one-take wonder!
• We covered a lot of ground and showcased a lot of our workplace.
• I love dancing in the atrium. We should have more reasons to do this on a regular basis.
• We got to dance with a friendly dinosaur.
• Actually, we had a good group of staff come along for the ride. Also, we had an awesome group number at the end.
• We laughed. A lot.

The collision happened fairly early on, and only once—pretty good, considering how many times we had made this run by then!

Cons:

• The camera moved a bit more than we could help. You know, what with the running backwards and forwards, and all.
• We wanted to post more staff in our employee staff area than we were able to do.
• We did several practice rounds before shooting the actual one-take/one cut wonder, and many of us were out of steam by the end, with several choosing to enjoy cooling off in the sub-zero temps we had outside on that day.
• Lindsay and I almost took each other out at the beginning of the video and were gasping by the end.

We were almost done at the point this scene was shot! The finale was soon to follow.

It was fun to do this video again, and to try something different. We greatly enjoyed it! From the dancing dinosaur to the cameos of staff from beginning to end, we have a video we are pleased to share. Watch it in all of its glory, here and now!

We need your help to get out of the first round, this year! On Tuesday, May 1, at 7 a.m. CST, through Wednesday, May 2, at 6:59 a.m. CST, you can vote as many times as you want for our video. All you have to do is go to www.whenyouworkatamuseum.com and find our submission. The link will be shared again via our social media pages.

Share our video. Share our passion. Enjoy our work. And don’t forget to vote!

We made it! Jess decided early on that we needed a dinosaur in the filmed footage, and paleontologist Becky Barnes kindly helped us out—you can see her in the midst of our group in this picture. Because, who wouldn’t want to dance with a dinosaur?

This was our final group shot, where we did our moves together and then cut loose.

Images from 00032, a photo collection that correlates with oral histories in our manuscript collection 10157. The images in this collection encompass a broad view of North Dakota.

I think it’s fair to say that most of us have one (or several) favorite components of our job, or at least have favorite collections or objects that we work with. Patrons and visitors ask us this sort of question frequently, so most of us have probably put some thought into the question. For example, my fellow blogger and coworker Lindsay loves MSS 10190, the Will Family collection.

There are multiple collections and even specific items within them that I truly enjoy and use frequently. But sometimes you work with a collection enough that it becomes part of you. For me, this is MSS 10157, the North Dakota Oral History Project. I often call it “my” collection, though it was created in the 1970s as part of the bicentennial, before I was born. It is a collection that I have been working with for quite some time now, and I am continuously both impressed and proud of it, for all of the history it contains and the use and memories it provides.

You might wonder what makes this collection stand out from any of the growing number of oral history collections we maintain. We do have a few, and I’ll be honest with you—I feel a little bit of love for all of them. They are all fantastic collections, and each time I “discover” a new one, I get drawn into the stories I hear within.

However, whereas many of our other collections are more focused, MSS 10157 is to my mind more of an immense snapshot of what North Dakota was at the time of the interviews and earlier. It is our second-largest oral history interview collection, numbering around 1100 cassettes, typically containing interviews with one or two people to a tape. The scope of these interviews covers the lives of the participants—sometimes their genealogy, sometimes stories about particular contemporaries or events, sometimes just their story of settlement. We have an interview with Ole Abelseth, who was a survivor of the Titanic’s sinking. We have an interview with Harry Roberts at Dickinson, whose father served as foreman of the HT Ranch in the late 1800s. Judge William L. Gipp at Fort Yates discussed his grandfather William Zahn’s service with Custer, as well as his Sioux culture. Nellie Hanson, of Grafton, was a female homesteader and served as a county superintendent of schools for a number of years. We have multitudes of men and women talking about their social activities, their towns, their memories. They cover topics from war to basket socials, and they are fascinating. There are also thousands of photos included, donated by some of the interviewees, or taken of the interview subjects at that time. These images also document a great and vast history.

Ole Abelseth Interview

 

 

 

 

Harry Roberts Interview

William L. Gipp Interview

Nellie Hanson Interview

My main role in working with this collection has been to digitize files, and, as we have begun moving into a new database system, to work with the item-level descriptions of each file. My other role in this, because I work at the reference desk, is to provide copies to the public. This is also one of my favorite parts of oral histories. These files can be easily located in the index on our website by family members who have never heard of these people or their stories. They can also be found by family who remember the interview taking place. Either way, they are able to listen to them for the first time or once again, to hear the stories, and imagine what it was like to live in North Dakota in a far more difficult time.

There are many cool objects in our collections, and we all work with different items, so it’s good to ask…you might find that little tidbit you never knew existed.

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Image 1: J. R. Eide and his bride (name unknown) appear outside the church just after their wedding. While the women in the photo appear fairly solemn, the men are prepared to provide music and fun for the wedding celebration. SHSND 00032-BE-02-00002
Image 2: Members of the Monango Juvenile Band pose for a group portrait while holding their instruments and wearing their band uniforms. SHSND 00032-DI-03-00007
Image 3: Gunder Rust's snowmobile near Alkabo, N.D. SHSND 00032-DV-13-00013
Image 4: Image of interviewee James Driver Sr. SHSND 0032-IR-04-00001

Chronicling America homepage

Chronicling America is an incredible online newspaper resource available for the public through the Library of Congress. Imagine this: there is a free-to-use database where you can search big city and little town newspapers within the United States. You go to the database, select a year range (1922 and earlier only at this point), select a location, type in a key word—and get results that can be viewed, enlarged, reduced, printed, and saved.

Curious about World War I? Here are some headlines. Searching for info about prison breaks, weather, government officials? Just type in your criteria and search—Chronicling America is OCR/word-searchable, which is so great! Our State Archives newspapers on microfilm are not indexed, so typically, if you want to find some information about your family, you have to search day by day, looking at each page. Not so with Chronicling America. You can just type in a name, and see what results come up!

Since 2011, we have received four grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities allowing us to add over 400,000 pages of newspapers to the site. Since not all newspapers can be included, we have selected papers from all over the state containing a lot of local news coverage. This includes papers such as the Ward County Independent, a weekly newspaper; the Bismarck Tribune, a daily; and newspapers from Grand Forks, Devils Lake, Steele, Williston, and other areas.

Some of the ND newspapers available on Chronicling America

One caveat to keep in mind; not all news was published in the newspaper. Chronicling America, or newspapers in general, are not a catch-all. Using this site can be a great, easy way to start a search, though, and can sometimes bring up results you might not expect to see.

For example: I received a search request about three years ago from a woman who was looking for a relative who had passed away in, she said, about December of 1902. We looked in multiple papers without any luck. A search of our link to the Vital Records death index did not show the individual dying within a ten-year span—not uncommon, especially around 1900 and through even the 1920s. There were a lot of errors and delays in reporting deaths in those early years. So I had to reply that we were unable to find anything.

Info about one of the papers available, the Bismarck Daily Tribune, on Chronicling America

Usually, that would be the end of it. However, I kept her request, and just recently, I came across it again. Just for fun, just to double check, I typed the name into Chronicling America, hoping I might find the relative’s name in a gossip column, visiting the city.

Instead, I found a death notice—a year later than the information she had provided!

It turned out, the gentleman in question had died in 1903, not 1902, and passed away in a different city. I was able to respond back, three years later, with an actual obituary. It always is disappointing to us if we can’t provide any information for these requests, so believe me when I say I was very excited to write to her again—possibly as excited as she was to receive the information!

As amazing as this all is, however, it is not possible at this time to put all of our newspapers online. This is something we are asked about frequently, and I do want to clarify that we are not planning to digitize our entire newspaper collection. The amount of time, space, and funding necessary for a venture like this is staggering. We are the official repository for newspapers from across the state, which means that newspaper titles from each of the 53 counties in the state are supposed to be sent to us on a daily or weekly basis. Considering that there is more than one newspaper for some counties, as well as the fact that we keep papers from the past—well, this adds up. Our rolls of microfilm number more than 17,500 already, and the majority of these rolls are microfilmed newspapers. One roll can hold about two years of weekly newspapers and about one month of daily newspapers.

A view of the front page of one ND newspaper, the Ward County Independent, from November 4, 1915, p1 on Chronicling America

I asked one of our staff about the more technical details for this. (If technical isn’t your jam, skip to the next paragraph!) If we were to scan each of our newspaper pages at 300 dpi jpg, which is an average and sometimes even larger image than you might get from a camera phone, we would need around 3.5 Petabytes, with no end in sight to more needed storage. Do you know what a petabyte is? It is approximately 1024 terabytes, or a million gigabytes of storage. That is incredibly huge. And that isn’t even providing for a high resolution image. That image would likely not be able to be enlarged or used in a display; it would be too small. That is also without making these newspapers OCR/word searchable, by the way.

So for now, I would encourage everyone to check out the incredible and amazing superhero of newspaper websites—Chronicling America can be a lifesaver in the world of newspaper searches.

SHSND 10200-00069. ND photographer Nancy Hendrickson’s photo of this bunny makes it look easy to be a superhero—but it’s not!