Internet resources: Earliest editions of the oldest US student newspaper “Boston Orient” go online

The George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives at the Bowdoin College (Maine, USA) has completed a mass-digitization pilot project to make the earliest editions of the “Bowdoin Orient” – the oldest student newspaper, available online.

With the help of the Boston Public Library and the Internet Archive, Special Collections has been able to digitize 50 volumes comprising editions from the paper's origin in 1871 through 1921. The project has yielded digital versions of the Orient that previously were not available anywhere aside from the paper copies located in the College library.

The technology used provides advantages in use and access that are light-years ahead of conventional microfilm storage methods used for newspaper archiving.

The optical character recognition technology within the mass scanning process allows for free-text searching and free world-wide Internet access to the information within these editions.

Special Collections Director Richard Lindemann says the hope is to continue the digitization process for volumes published up into the early 2000s, when editions of the Orient began to be published routinely online.