Newspaper project preserves pages of campus history

For years, the only way to read old campus newspapers was to go to the Bartle Library and sort through the microfilm yourself. But now, thanks to the New York State Historic Newspaper project, past editions of The Colonial News and Pipe Dream are available online.

With help from a Technology and Digitization Grant from the South Central Regional Library Council in Ithaca, awarded to the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections Department in 2018, more than 1,000 issues of historic campus newspapers are free to read online. The grant application was prepared by Blythe Roveland-Brenton ’83, director of Special Collections and Library Preservation, with assistance from Irene Gashurov, the former development officer for the University Libraries. It was also accompanied by a letter of support from the editor-in-chief and managing editor of Pipe Dream at the time.

The project has allowed Pipe Dream’s history to be preserved dating back to its inception on Nov. 22, 1946, when it debuted as The Colonial News. The paper’s name was changed to Pipe Dream in 1970, and the project covers issues until 1974.

Roveland-Brenton says campus newspapers are an essential part of understanding Binghamton’s history, and they can even help us look back to when the school was known as Triple Cities College and Harpur College. The newspapers provide a student perspective on the history of the University and showcase what was important to students at that time, she says.

“There aren’t really that many historic documents that support our understanding of the early college history,” Roveland-Brenton says. “The news stories in student newspapers sometimes are our one and only clue about certain things that happened relevant to the University, like events, guest lecturers who came to campus, social protests, all sorts of things. It’s a significant source of information about the University’s history.”

The preservation has also helped current students, faculty and staff learn more about individual departments’ histories, and has helped to uncover the impact of people of color on campus. For its 50th anniversary in 2020, the Africana Studies Department was able to use the project to learn about the formation of the Afro-American Studies Department. Administrative offices were also able to use the project to assist in research on faculty members of color in the early days of the University.

As an archivist, Roveland-Brenton says she is excited to be able to access not just Binghamton publications, but to be able to explore the hundreds of other newspapers included in the project’s website as well.

“There are over 11 million pages of historic newspapers from the state available online on that site,” Roveland-Brenton says. “And we’re so excited that we’ve been able to contribute to that project.”

How to uncover history

Explore back issues at https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org. Click Broome on the New York state map and choose either The Colonial News or Pipe Dream.