We are hard at work getting the new History Center ready to open, but history doesn’t just exist in physical objects, there is a lot that can be learned by exploring newspapers and other printed material. Whiting has been home to many different newspapers over the decades, containing thousands of stories about births, deaths, dinner parties, politics, and a whole lot of gossip. Ever wonder if your great grandfather enjoyed going to the local theater or participated in one of the Community Center’s pet parades for local kids? Our local newspapers can probably tell you. However, for many decades accessing those newspapers has been very difficult.
The Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society has some physical copies, but late 19th and early 20th century newsprint is very fragile and hard to handle. Some copies also exist on microfilm, but that can be very tedious if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for. Many years ago the Whiting Public Library got started on a project to digitize the newspapers, getting all of the surviving newspapers onto a hard drive. However, this version was not searchable and was also very clumsy and hard to use.
Last year the Whiting Public Library transferred their local history material, including the hard drive, to the Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society, and we quickly got to work thinking about how we could make these newspapers more accessible, not only for our own research, but to the entire community.
After a lot of work by our board and volunteers, we are thrilled to announce the project to fully digitize our newspapers is officially underway. We are working with the Indiana State Library on the project and the newspapers will eventually be hosted on Hoosier State Chronicles. Once the project is completed the newspapers will be keyword searchable and open to everyone for free. This will transform the information we can easily access about our community and make our history richer and more alive for everyone.
The following newspapers will be included in the project:
The Ben Franklin News
The Calumet Day
The Lakeview Beacon
The Whiting Democrat
The Whiting Herald
The Whiting Star
The Whiting News
The Times-Graphic
The Whiting Call
The Whiting Sun
The oldest of these newspapers dates back to 1894 and in total we will have digitized roughly 23,000 pages of material. We do not have a completion date on the project yet, but stay tuned to our website over the coming months for additional information.
We would like to thank the Whiting Public Library for donating their public history material to us and for getting the project underway. The Indiana State Library’s ability to help us has also been critical in allowing us to provide free access to this resource. Finally, this project would not have been possible without the financial support of many important donors. We would like to thank Jerry Banik, Centier Bank, the Hammond Gaming Advisory Commission, and the Hammond Urban Enterprise Association for funding this project.
