Star Press donates newspaper clippings to Ball State

MUNCIE — The Star Press has donated its newspaper morgue containing at least hundreds of thousands of old clippings and photographs to Ball State University. There could be well over a million clippings.

The reference collection from the 20th century contains subject files ranging from AIDS to zoos, biographical files ranging from Willie Aames to Julie Zylka, and obituary files ranging from Charles Edward Abbott to Dorsie A. Zweifel.

Ball State is digitizing the files into an online library with full-text search capabilities available to the public at no cost.

Previously, the files were available to Star Press journalists who used them for background and context, for example when reporting on the sudden death of a local newsmaker or the worst flooding in local history.

While the public can browse old editions of The Star Press and its predecessor newspapers on microfilm at Ball State and at local public libraries, the collection of digitized clippings and photographs will be "searchable, not just browsable," said Brandon Pieczko, a digital archivist at Ball State's Bracken Library.

"You will pick up things by searching that you won't have discovered by browsing, because there are hundreds of thousands of clippings probably," he said. "For example, if somebody's name is mentioned in passing, if somebody was like a witness to something or (a reporter) interviewed somebody on a random topic 20 years ago, it will show up in a full text search. I could find out that it was my father or grandfather. It makes it possible to help researchers find that needle in a haystack."

Michael Szajewski, acting head of archives and special collections at Ball State, added: "It gives you so much more discoverability. … If you're using microfilm, you have to come to Ball State, you have to take time to do it, you have to get there when the library is open, and you have to pay to park here. With this project, you can search these things on the bus on your way to work if you've got an internet connection. It kind of democratizes who is able to use it beyond just people who go to the library."

Ball State librarians counted 1,570 folders containing 7,000 clippings in just the first drawer of Star Press biographies that they began processing. There are 59 drawers in the biography cabinets. The librarians estimate a total of 92,500 biography folders containing 425,000 clippings.

And that figure doesn't include the voluminous other clippings in the subject files or the obit files. The subject files fill about 300 boxes.

"We're going to have people working on this until they retire," Pieczko said. "The entire project may be in the area of 15 years," Szajewski added.

But the university isn't waiting 15 years before adding the collection to its digital media repository. Starting with the biographies, the clippings will be added to the repository as they are digitized alphabetically.

By the way, Aames, the first biography alphabetically, was a TV actor whose roles included Tommy Bradford on the 1977-81 television series "Eight is Enough." He visited a Muncie church as evangelical superhero "Bibleman" in 1998, the same year Delta High School graduate Julie Zylka was making headlines as a rookie Ball State volleyball player.

Charles Edward Abbott is the first obit. Born in Jamestown, Tenn. he moved to Muncie in 1958, worked at Broderick Corp., and died on Sept. 23, 1995, at age 52.

Dorsie Zweifel, the last obit, died at 86 on May 22, 1997. She lived most of her life in Rhinelander, Wis., and worked for many years at the Red Dot Potato Chip Factory in Rhinelander.  She moved to Muncie three years before her passing.

The Star Press began digitally archiving news stories and photographs at the start of the 21st Century, after which it phased out the last of its librarians who had clipped the papers with scissors. The newspaper's 21st Century electronic archives are publicly accessible for a fee.

"The newspaper is the record of history for our city, and this collection of clippings is perhaps one of the best-kept, deepest looks into that history," Star Press executive editor Greg Fallon said. "While we continue to strengthen our efforts on the digital front, it only made sense for us to take this step — to digitize the collection for the future use of journalists as well as the community.”

It will make journalistic research easier and "result in much more depth when working on a given topic, as a search will result in findings throughout the collection," Fallon added. "While it will take time to get the digitization finished, it will be a treasure future journalists and researchers can use for decades to come.”

The editor also called Ball State a "treasure for this community, and it’s an honor for The Star Press to team up with the university to add a collection to the library that not only will broaden the research horizons for students, but for our community. We consider it a step toward helping future Ball State students better understand the community they temporarily call home.”

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.