Analy’s student newspaper has always been a valuable outlet of student writing: student’s opinions, concerns, dreams, and ambitions. However, today, we can get a glimpse of what Analy students were thinking about in the past. Over the past several months, volunteers at the West County Museum in Sebastopol have been working on a special, Analy-themed project: documenting and digitizing historical copies of the Analy student newspaper.
The West County Museum, which is run by the Western Sonoma County Historical Society, is a quaint little building on South Main Street, in downtown Sebastopol. Located in the building that once was Sebastopol’s railroad depot, the museum has history ingrained in its very walls. Inside, volunteers organize countless artifacts regarding Sebastopol’s history, including collections of the Sebastopol Times newspapers, old railroad relics, posters from apple fairs long ago, and now, a nearly complete collection of the Analy student newspaper dating back to 1921. “It’s our job to maintain and grow a collection of historic artifacts from the community,” the museum’s director Donna Pittman says, noting that it is their job to “tell the story of our town.”
The current project for the museum is digitizing the student newspapers – which requires both community effort to locate historical newspapers and also scanning every page of every issue, so it can be viewed online. Mary Dodgion, the museum’s archivist, explains this process. “The equipment we are using is on loan from newspapers.com and includes a digital camera with overhead mount equipment, 2 high LED light pads, and a laptop with photo shooting software.” Effectively, they are using a camera mounted above a table, rather than a traditional scanner, as it makes the process much quicker.
However, even just getting the newspapers proved to be a struggle. Dodgion explains how “We were given a big chunk of papers from Loretta Castleberry. She happened to be at the right place at the right time, when she found that the newspapers were headed to the dumpster.” Castleberry brought the stack of newspapers straight to the museum. “I inventoried them by dates and knew more existed and wanted to fill it in. By word of mouth we began looking for the missing issues,” Dodgion said.
Eventually, this word of mouth reached our current Analy newspaper team, which publishes West County World. After a bit of searching, and the help of Analy social science teacher Rachel Ambrose, two old boxes of newspapers were located. Upon bringing them to the museum and a bit of inventorying, the museum was able to significantly increase their collection. They still are missing quite a few, but after the combined work of many community members, the museum has been able to put together a significant collection of Analy newspapers.
Now, the papers will be digitized and uploaded online so people from across our community can view them. “The goal of the project is to make all of the high school newspapers available to the public,” Dodgion said. The newspapers, which have had five names over the years (The Analyan, Blue Prints, Analy Independent, Tiger Times, and West County World), will be available for anyone to read online as soon as the digitization process is finished.
The Analy Newspaper is and always has been a vital part of our community. It holds countless students’ voices, opinions, and dreams. And by reading and understanding our past, we can prepare ourselves for the future.
