Newsroom

Corvallis newspapers from a 46-year period more than a century ago can now be accessed online, for free.

A collaborative effort of Oregon State University's Libraries and Press, the Benton County Historical Society and Museum, and the University of Oregon's Knight Library has digitized Corvallis newspapers from 1863-1909. Anyone can go online at oregonnews.uoregon.edu and see issues of the Corvallis Times or Corvallis Gazette.

Prior to 1909, the Gazette and the Times were separate newspapers. The recent microfilming and digitization of Corvallis newspapers from this period adds to the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program, which totals more than 700,000 pages of Oregon newspapers. The collection's online holdings are primarily from 1922 and earlier because these are in the public domain and may be freely copied.

"We are absolutely thrilled with the availability of online digital newspapers," said Irene Zenev, executive director of the Benton County Historical Society and Museum. "This is a powerful resource for researchers, genealogists and historians, not to mention students of all ages. We are proud of the fact that the bound volumes of the Gazette and the Times that we collected and preserved were of use in this important project."

The time period covered by these newspapers was important for both Corvallis and Oregon State University, said Larry Landis, director of Special Collections and Archives Research Center at OSU Libraries and Press.

"Having this content available online will be a boon to many researchers, especially as OSU moves toward its 150th anniversary in 2018," he said. "Students at OSU have already used the online newspapers for research papers on OSU history."

The digitization relied on original newspapers in the collections of Oregon State's Valley Library and the Benton County Historical Society and Museum. The digitization was supported by funding received by the University of Oregon from the National Endowment for the Humanities.