IDS Office, January 20, 1950, University Archives photo P0027073
IU Day Fun: Digitize 1950s IDS newspapers
UPDATE: April 23, 2024: IU Libraries is thrilled to report that we met our IU Day Crowdfunding goal! Thank you so sincerely to every person who encouraged our important work to make IU history accessible. Gifts toward IDS digitization are still being accepted, please reach out to Pete Rhoda, Executive Director of Development at IU Libraries, for details.
Written by Barb Berggoetz, Guest Journalist
Indiana University wants to make it easier for researchers, alumni, IU students, faculty, and the general public to read back issues of the Indiana Daily Student (IDS). As part of IU Day on April 17, University Archives hopes to raise $10,000 to digitize IDS issues in the 1950s decade so they can be accessed by anyone online. Currently, issues in this decade (and many others) must be viewed on microfilm in the Herman B Wells Library, limiting their use.
“We get asked all the time if the IDS is digitized. But it’s a very expensive project, so only a small number have been scanned,” said Dina Kellams, IU Libraries University Archives director.
“We have researchers spending hours going through microfilm. It’s going to make all the difference in the world for them. It will also lead to a lot of rediscoveries of campus stories that may have been forgotten.”
University Archives image P0079126 showing the front page of the IDS on July 12, 1974.
University Archives image P0020570 celebrating the Women's Basketball team winning the 2018 Women's National Invitation Tournament.
The IDS, winner of numerous national student newspaper awards over the years, was first printed in 1867 and launched its website in 1996. Having once been printed daily like many newspapers, it is now printed on paper every Thursday and published digitally the other days of the week. See today's headlines.
Former Editors-in-Chief commemorate IDS history
IU alums and former IDS editors Holly Hays and Rachel Kipp, both IU Student Alumni Publications Board members, see significant long-term benefits of this project.
“I am personally excited about it,” said Kipp, of Dover, Delaware, director of communication and marketing for the Philadelphia Bar Association. “Having (issues) available to anyone at any time would be a great service to have.”
Kipp, a 2002 IU graduate, knows firsthand the difficulty of accessing IDS back issues using microfilm. Kipp said she and two other former IDS staffers spent hours combing through issues on microfilm at the Wells Library to research the IU Press book commemorating IDS’s 150 years of publication. In Indiana Daily Student: 150 Years of Headlines, Deadlines and Bylines, editors and IDS alumni Kipp, Amy Wimmer Schwarb, and Charles Scudder pieced together behind-the-scenes remembrances from former IDS reporters and photographers, newsroom images from throughout the decades, and a curated collection of notable IDS front pages.
“The IDS is a treasure trove for documenting IU and Bloomington history, as well as world history. Student journalists cover many big stories,” Kipp said.
Hays, a 2016 IU graduate who now is the IndyStar’s newsroom development director, said the IDS digitization scanning project is important from a historical standpoint. “Journalism is the first rough draft of history. It contributes to public memory and heavily influences how we remember historical events and how we build a sense of place.”
Hays, a Bloomington native, said that preserving preserving student newspapers is essential, as daily newspapers are decreasing. “A lot of student newspapers have had to step up and fill the gap when legacy media have gutted newspapers in their communities.”
“If we have a chance to preserve not just campus history, but Bloomington history,” Hays said, “we should do that.”
IU Day Donor says IDS digitization preserves a key part of IU history
The Indiana Daily Student meant a lot to Janet Wright’s parents when they were students at IU Bloomington in the 1940s and on their way to journalism careers. “That was their life,” said Wright, IU graduate and retired librarian in Kalamazoo, Michigan. “They owned and worked at newspapers for their whole lives.”
Wright, who has donated to IU Libraries in the past, learned about University Archives' goal to raise $10,000 to digitize the 1950s IDS issues. Donating to the IDS project offered her a unique opportunity, she said, to preserve a key part of IU’s history and support the newspaper so important to her parents. Her lead contribution was matched by the IU Foundation and inspired several more gifts before the crowdfunding campaign even kicked off.
“It is a great way to honor them even more,” said Wright. “They were friends their entire lives with people who worked for the IDS.” Wright served as a school librarian in Kalamazoo for 20 years and initially in a suburban Marion County district and in Kuwait. She lived abroad 10 years and spent five years working in China.
Wright, who taught school several years, earned an elementary education bachelor’s degree from IU South Bend and a master’s degree in education from IUPUI with a school librarian endorsement. Wright grew up watching her parents, James H. Wright and Joanne E. Whiteneck, enjoy their careers. After other positions, they bought the weekly Wakarusa Tribune near Elkhart in 1952 and ran it together until he died in 1967. Then, she operated it for years and sold it until her own passing in 1990.
Digitizing the IDS, Wright said, will benefit many people, including researchers and those, like herself, searching for family information. She knew her mother was IDS editor-in-chief but wasn’t sure when.
University Archives director Dina Kellams searched digitized issues from 1937-47, found Whiteneck was editor in summer of 1945 and sent Wright a front page scan of her mother’s first issue as editor, as pictured here.
“The only way she could send the scan is because records had been digitized,” said Wright. “That would be great for other people who want to do some genealogy.”
Get notified when IDS archive issues are online
Digital issues of the IDS dated from 1867 to 1923 are available through a service to which IU Libraries subscribes, NewspaperARCHIVE. Issues digitized by the Archives, dated from 1938 to 1949, are expected to be on Digital Collections Online and available to everyone worldwide by the end of the summer.
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