In researching context for newspapers in the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection I came across the fascinating history of Zion, IL, formerly Zion City, which was created as a utopian community in 1901 by an evangelical and early Pentecostal faith healer named John Alexander Dowie. In its early years the city did not allow drinking, dancing, smoking, card playing, theater, or even driving more than 10 miles an hour. Zion is a small town south of Kenosha and north of Waukegan in Lake County, Illinois. It is currently home to a nuclear power plant but boasts a rich history in American religious movements and utopian city planning. Continue reading “Zion, IL: Utopia on the Prairie”
Category: HPNL
What’s Missing from this Digital Collection?
Many of our digital collections were created from microfilm surrogates, which is to say that the original print collection was at some point microfilmed (mostly in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s) for sale to libraries. Our own library bought many of these microfilm collections. Because it’s so much less expensive to digitize from microfilm (than from print originals), and because digitizing from microfilm spares those print originals from unnecessary wear and tear, many of our digital collections were created from these microfilm surrogates. You might be wondering how to determine whether a collection was digitized from microfilm. One good sign is if the documents in the collection are displayed in black-and-white (especially low bit-depth black-and-white) rather than color. Collections digitized directly from original print documents will usually display those documents in color. For example, the following: Continue reading “What’s Missing from this Digital Collection?”
6 New Digital Collections
Early Modern England: Society, Culture, and Everyday Life, 1500-1700
Published and unpublished sources selected for their capacity to document the history of everyday life. Sources include court records, administrative records, petitions, wills, inventories, tax records, financial documents, military records, church records, memoirs, diaries, unpublished essays, commonplace books, printed broadsides, and printed books. Also included are 164 objects, such as clothing, jewelry, and home furnishings. The collection is organized around twenty themes: Family life; Birth, marriage, death; Health and medicine; Land and property; Possessions; Work and employment; Poverty; Agriculture; Finance; Trade and economics; Law and order; Politics and government; Foreign affairs; War; Monarchy; Religion; Scholarship, science, and the humanities; Arts, literature, and culture; Travel; and Women’s history. In addition to these themes, documents can be browsed by region and date of creation. Continue reading “6 New Digital Collections”
We’ve Reopened!
UPDATE: Beginning Monday, August 9, appointments will no longer be necessary and we will be open Monday through Friday, 1:00 to 5:00. We are also available for virtual research consultations, which you can schedule by emailing us (hpnl@library.illinois.edu). Continue reading “We’ve Reopened!”
The National News: A Trade Unionist Newspaper
The National News was created by editor Carl E. Person after the shutdown of the Strike Bulletin in May 1915. National News began publication only a few months later in October of that year. Person was a famous labor activist who had been put on trial in 1914 for shooting a strike breaker and was later acquitted on the basis of self-defense. Much like Strike Bulletin, the National News was devoted to describing collective labor actions across the United States. However, it also contained excerpts from the some of the latest popular fiction of the day including a novel The Abysmal Brute by Jack London. Person centered the National News in Chicago instead of his earlier location in Clinton, Illinois due to his feelings that Clinton had become a hostile work environment following the end of the Illinois Central Shopmen’s Strike and his near-fatal encounter. Continue reading “The National News: A Trade Unionist Newspaper”
The Illinois Issue and The American Issue: Prohibitionist Newspapers
The Illinois Issue was a weekly newspaper created in January 1906 for an audience of prohibitionist readers. The Illinois Issue was centered in Chicago, IL, and published in Downers Grove, IL. In February 1912, the Illinois Issue ceased production. Starting in July 1913, the Illinois Issue merged with a weekly national publication called the American Issue. Both papers were organized by a political group called the Anti-Saloon League. The American Issue began in 1896. It then ramped up production in 1909 because the town of Westerville, OH, donated a printing plant to the Anti-Saloon League to further the cause of alcohol prohibition. Continue reading “The Illinois Issue and The American Issue: Prohibitionist Newspapers”
Vandalia Whig and Illinois Intelligencer: An Early Illinois Newspaper
The first newspaper in Illinois, the Illinois Herald, was founded as a weekly publication in 1814 based in Kaskaskia. It soon became the Western Intelligencer and carried the title Intelligencer in one form or another for the rest of its existence. The town of Kaskaskia was the Illinois Territory’s capital until 1818 when it became the state capital after Illinois gained statehood. The Intelligencer was created by abolitionist politicians Daniel Pope Cook and Elijah C. Berry. While they were in charge, the paper shared their anti-slavery politics. The boundary between journalism and politics in the 19th century was porous. Multiple editors and publishers for the Intelligencer held elected offices during the Intelligencer’s time in print. William H. Brown notes in his 1857 biography of Cook, “With the printing of the Laws and Journals of the Territorial Legislatures, and blanks for public offices, at prices which would now astonish a practical printer it is certain that the business was lucrative”. As both the early state’s primary newspaper and the official printer of state documents, the Intelligencer wielded strong political clout. Continue reading “Vandalia Whig and Illinois Intelligencer: An Early Illinois Newspaper”
The Strike Bulletin: A Chronicle of a Failed Strike
The Strike Bulletin began publication in April 1913. The Strike Bulletin was a weekly paper marketed to labor unionists in the railroad industry. It was published from Clinton, Illinois for the entirety of its run. The Strike Bulletin was the creation of a labor organization called the Illinois Central System Foundation and was edited by Carl E. Person. Person was affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World. The Illinois Central System Foundation organized laborers who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad.
Continue reading “The Strike Bulletin: A Chronicle of a Failed Strike”
The Daily Worker
Daily Worker was created for Communist Party USA members in 1921. The paper was originally titled the Worker, centered in Chicago and marketed as a weekly newspaper for the first three years of its existence. It then moved to New York City and carried out a pre-planned expansion into a daily broadsheet with a new name, Daily Worker. Publication under this new title lasted from 1924 to 1958. Daily Worker was primarily focused on issues relating to organized labor. Continue reading “The Daily Worker“
New Digitized Newspapers
We’ve purchased two new newspaper files for our collection of ProQuest Historical Newspapers. We’ve also purchased additional years for seven titles already in our collection