The Catholic News Archive

Cliff Lynch:… Cliff Lynch:… Cliff Lynch:… Cliff Lynch: Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us, and we will be getting started in about 90 seconds or so. Cliff Lynch: Welcome. Thanks for joining us this afternoon or whatever time it is where you are and we will be getting started in about a minute or so. Cliff Lynch: We’ll be starting in about 30 seconds. Thanks for joining us. Cliff Lynch: Okay. Why don’t we go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining us for this last day of the first week of the CNI virtual fall 2020 member meeting. Cliff Lynch: I’m the director of CNI Cliff Lynch and I’ll be introducing this rather briefly a couple of logistical things Cliff Lynch: This is being recorded and we will be making this session publicly available later, there is closed captioning available if you like to turn it on.

02:58 - Cliff Lynch: We do have a chat stream available and please feel free to use the chat stream for comments or to introduce yourself. Cliff Lynch: As the session goes on. There’s also a Q AMP a tool at the bottom of your screen will hold all the questions till the end. At which point, Diane golden Burkhardt will materialize to moderate the question and answer session, but Cliff Lynch: Please feel free to ask questions at any point as they occur to you. I think that’s everything in terms of logistical stuff staff. So let me just introduce the session. We have with us. Pop rocky from Gonzaga and also gene McManus from the University of Notre Dame a Cliff Lynch: The presentation today. I think is going to be quite interesting.

It deals with the development of a Catholic news archive. Cliff Lynch: There. Cliff Lynch: Are a number of efforts that I am aware of to capture various collections of often smaller news newspapers that Cliff Lynch: Were in distribution around America for many, many years, and Cliff Lynch: They tend to be really fascinating because they map into, you know, all kinds of immigrant communities and Cliff Lynch: ethnic communities and things of that nature and really give us a wonderful set of insights into the Cliff Lynch: Into parts of the history of this country that aren’t well known. So I think this will be a very interesting presentation and I’m very much looking forward to it. With that, let me just hand it off to Paul and say gene and Paul, thank you so much for joining us over to you. Paul Bracke: Great. Thanks, Cliff. And thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon.

05:21 - Paul Bracke: So I’m Paul Bragg, the dean of the folly library at Gonzaga University. Paul Bracke: And I’m also a member of the board of the Catholic research resources Alliance, which is really the sponsoring organization of the Catholic news archive. Paul Bracke: And my co presenter is Jean McManus librarian for Catholic Studies and archives engagement at the University of Notre Dame. Paul Bracke: And we’re really excited today to be able to share, share the work of the Catholic OF THE CRA the Catholic research resources alliance. Paul Bracke: With you today on Catholic news archive.

And we’d also be remiss without acknowledging the contributions of Jennifer younger EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF CRA in 05:58 - Paul Bracke: For her contributions in developing the presentation. So we’re just going to start by providing an overview of the initiative and the project. Paul Bracke: Move into a discussion of the research value of the collections and then move into a brief discussion of some of what we think, or maybe some of the most pressing directions for future activities for the group. Paul Bracke: So, Paul Bracke: Just start with a little bit of background, the Catholic news archive is a program of the Catholic research resources alliance era has had mentioned Paul Bracke: CRA is an independent membership organization that seeks to provide global access to Catholic research resources. Paul Bracke: And we have about 50 members and partners.

Many of these are academic libraries like Notre Dame or Gonzaga Marquette University of San Diego places like that, but our membership also includes other sorts of cold cultural heritage institutions. Paul Bracke: That have other unique contributions to make to our work. So for example, we have religious congregation and diocesan archives, such as the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Paul Bracke: The Catholic historical research center of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the daughters of charity provincial archives, as some of our members. Paul Bracke: So the worker CRA is done through a number of programs, including the Catholic portal which provides discovery to rare and difficult to locate Catholic research resources from across the Atlantic memberships.

07:24 - Paul Bracke: But really the one, the one major initiative that we’re here to share today is the Catholic news archive. Paul Bracke: So just to give you some context for the archive itself. The Catholic news archive is a digital collection of North American Catholic newspapers. Paul Bracke: That is freely available to users and currently consists of about 500,000 digitized pages from 17 newspapers and these papers cover a range of dates geography and communities. Paul Bracke: Jeans going to discuss the research value of the collections in a little bit.

But just to give you a few examples to some of the interesting newspapers that we have in the collection. Paul Bracke: You know, as a native St. Louis, and I had to pick out the shepherd of the valley, which is the first newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, which was published in the 1830s and was an English and French language newspaper Paul Bracke: Another interesting one is the Catholic Worker on newspaper thread by Dorothy Day. Paul Bracke: And one that I’m also drawn to Islam Esperanza which was a national Catholics Spanish language newspaper in Los Angeles. Paul Bracke: Published from the 13th from the late 20s through the 50s and it focuses on Catholic topics related to the US Spanish speaking population with a particular focus on the Mexican American community and had a unique transnational perspective.

08:41 - Paul Bracke: So within the archive, you know, scanning and conversion meet or exceed the standards of the national Digital Newspaper program with article and page level indexing done with Mets, although again widely used for newspaper digitization projects around the world. Paul Bracke: Our platform that we use is rhydian company based in New Zealand provides a mobile, mobile friendly platform again used by many, many Digital Newspaper digitization projects, including like the state library and National Library even projects. Oops. Paul Bracke: So here’s a screenshot so that you can just get a Paul Bracke: Feel for what it looks like. Paul Bracke: That’s now that is really how we’ve gotten to where we have the archive that we have Paul Bracke: So the Catholic newspaper archives been developed a set of development and partnership fed cheese to guide the effort. Paul Bracke: I’ll start with some of the developments pretty racy.

So you can see a number of these on the slide, but they’re just a couple that I’d like to particularly highlight 10:00 - Paul Bracke: First really just a fundamental Paul Bracke: Fundamental principle for us is that we’ve really been wanting to design this sentence archive with concern for functionality and access for researchers Paul Bracke: We acknowledge that there is probably have. There are other uses, which we would encourage but you know the use by researchers, it’s really been primary in the development of the archive. Paul Bracke: Second thing is that a goal of the archivist provide long term barrier free access to the collection. But, you know, in the interest of the newspaper publishers who are our partners. It also reserves rights for commercial use to those to those newspaper publishers Paul Bracke: And, you know, finally, I think.

And this is something that I think is really incredibly important about the Catholic news newspaper archives, but also CRA is work in general. Paul Bracke: Is that a goal of the project has been to allow the participation of a wide range of participants in the project in a variety of roles. Paul Bracke: And this includes participation from small academic libraries, who might not otherwise have the resources or opportunity to participate in large scale digitization projects, but also as as Paul Bracke: The our membership list may indicate also other types of institutions that might not always be included as partners with academic libraries and these sorts of projects. Paul Bracke: And with the Catholic news archive, in particular some examples of these would be Paul Bracke: Are many diocesan archive part of partners, the Catholic communication campaign of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and also a community of women religious Paul Bracke: So we have partnerships are really important are really incredibly important to us in our work. Paul Bracke: And we’ve engaged in a Paul Bracke: You know, in a number of activities to develop these partnerships on different levels.

11:56 - Paul Bracke: First, as I mentioned in the previous slide. Paul Bracke: A you know one of our goals is one of our key partners is our newspaper would be our newspaper newspaper publishers Paul Bracke: And without permissions and their partnership, this, this, this archive couldn’t exist and you know one thing that we found interesting is that openness has really been the selling part point to this partners for whom a primary concerns really expanding their communities of readers. Paul Bracke: As well as, you know, there’s also an interest in contributing to scholarly communication scholar community scholar community at large. Paul Bracke: And we were able to partner with them in a manner that allows for open distribution of their publications, while also reserving Paul Bracke: The right rights for them to engage in some commercial reuse as they wish. So for this. So, for example, there might be digitization of Sacramento records that would be listed in newspapers through commercial sources.

12:53 - Paul Bracke: And so I think that, you know, key point that Jennifer younger always makes is that for our publishers, it’s Paul Bracke: You know participation. The decision to participate with the Catholic news archive versus commercial outfits. It’s not necessarily an either or proposition for them. Paul Bracke: There’s an extent to which they can do both. And in fact, some of our partners have been able to leverage their commercial digitization activities to be able to contribute scans their work to the news archive.

13:22 - Paul Bracke: Second layer is we really needed develop partnerships with a variety of libraries and archives to Paul Bracke: To secure access of copies for digitization. Now these are materials that were there are very few large collections of Catholic newspapers were even libraries that can that collect them may have limited retention policies. Paul Bracke: And so these are really hidden not just hidden collections, but they’re really widely scattered collections as well. And we’ve that’s where Paul Bracke: It’s really been particularly important for us to be able to work with, with institutions like diocesan archives who hold so many of these scattered resources. Paul Bracke: And finally, the third thing is that we’ve really worked.

14:06 - Paul Bracke: Develop great partnerships in regarding governance, right, so we’ve really been engaged, not only within CRA but also engaging engaging scholars and our publishing partners and helping to make policy and strategic decisions strategic direction decisions for the archives Paul Bracke: And these these partnerships have also carried over into our funding so Paul Bracke: You know, we’ve done cooperative funding of pilot projects of contributing we’ve done cooperative cooperative funding through CRA for funding kind of ongoing some of the ongoing hosting costs, but also worked with our members and other partners on securing grant funds to Paul Bracke: To launch Paul Bracke: to digitize additional content. So with that, I’ll hand things over to Jean to discuss the research value of the collections within the archive. Jean McManus: Thanks, Paul. Jean McManus: So we listed on this slide, some of the themes and and more prominent names that Jean McManus: That researchers have used the, the Catholic news archive to mine. And we even with our current corpus of Jean McManus: 17 titles, we can really show change over time and Catholic reporting Catholic topics of interest to to Catholics nationwide. A really from the 1830s, all the way into the 21st century, although that’s not Jean McManus: Any more additions that we can make that will add to the ability to turn up the Catholic perspective.

15:52 - Jean McManus: On this slide, we’ve got Jean McManus: We’ve got images of Columbus monuments. Jean McManus: European one, and then on the right is Jean McManus: Columbus behind a fence in it’s actually a local statue that is under consideration for either contextualizing or possible removal or something like that, but Jean McManus: Columbus is kind of a useful figure to highlight here because that’s something that the Catholic news archive can do is Jean McManus: Give, give access to thoughts on things like monuments and what themes were important. The, the archive turns up more than 2000 references to Christopher Columbus and that shows the 19th century Catholic enthusiasm for the FOR COLUMBUS as a Catholic hero. And then, but there’s also Jean McManus: Toward the later end of of the whole archive, you see. Jean McManus: Information about, you know, the controversies associated with Columbus. We’ve also got streams that document.

17:15 - Jean McManus: Indian schools Native Americans Catholicism among smaller groups black Catholicism. So all of these things are things that we want to add to the collection in order to to get at some of these more perhaps niche. Jean McManus: Communities and with increased attention to diversity, equity inclusion that will certainly shape the way that we we Jean McManus: Seek titles to add to the collection going Jean McManus: But for now, we’re, we’re thinking about what know from the national newspapers that are already included and what kind of diversity. Can we present in terms of language like last for Jean McManus: The early French language portions of some of the newspapers. Jean McManus: And we’re considering things like Jean McManus: Can we highlight the one of the first Black Catholic newspaper actually published in Detroit in the 1880s and 90s.

The American Catholic Tribune published by Daniel read born and slave and Kentucky. Jean McManus: And then we also have Jean McManus: Access to collections, like the Catholic Sue Harold, which was also published in the 19th century by one of those Jean McManus: An Indian School and mission in South Dakota. So these are the directions that will go in to increase the access to these these kind of things. Jean McManus: We can go to the next slide. Jean McManus: Which is again a screenshot of the Catholic news archive.

19:19 - Jean McManus: Showing our Jean McManus: Our content for numbers columbus on its own as a keyword pulls up everything from Jean McManus: Ohio cities and other places and the Knights of Columbus, etc. But you’ll note in the tiny text in the bottom corner. We’ve got facets that Jean McManus: Show the the coverage, just in that portion of the screen 818 39 we’ve got 63 references to Christopher Columbus so Jean McManus: For certain topics. This is going to be a really rich resource as we add to it even more of a rich resource. Jean McManus: You can go to the next slide.

Paul 20:11 - Jean McManus: The Catholic news archive with all of the members and partners is proving already to be useful in managing our collections. We do have a lot of Jean McManus: diocesan and academic Catholic Jean McManus: Libraries included in our membership and none, no one of us know even coalition of us can digitize all of the relevant resources but collectively, we’re seeing that we can really leverage this for our own purposes and for the greater good that Paul getting Jean McManus: We are governed by members of the CRA and in consultation with scholars with all of the partners. Jean McManus: Each institution is able to put forward for prioritization titles that they’re interested in that titles that might be relevant to their local community and scholars who we’ve convened from around the country, a lot of historians on surprisingly Jean McManus: Have a great deal of interest in surfacing this kind of these kind of resources. Jean McManus: And so there’s a of that vibrant conversation about what things to include and how to go forward and then libraries can rally around and archives as well to support the digitization of particular titles and Jean McManus: We did start with an eye toward digitizing the, the, quote unquote Vatican two years of particular newspapers, because that is an area of great interest. Jean McManus: And it’s true that these newspapers that we’ve selected are ones that are often not included in larger Jean McManus: Commercial collections newspaper databases or even in some of the efforts.

We’ve seen like Chronicling America from Library of Congress. They’re only a handful of and only partial representation of Catholic newspapers. So we do feel like we’re we’re Jean McManus: contributing to that larger open access Jean McManus: Material that’s out there. Um, Jean McManus: So we the digitization and digital preservation go hand in hand, as things are put forward for digitization, and that’s been by particular members seeking grants, but then orienting their, their digitization efforts toward inclusion in the Catholic news archive. Jean McManus: We’ve seen real success with that and because the the standards for the platform are consistent.

It gives everyone an ongoing access to to these resources. Jean McManus: And we have been very happy to use this in a couple of instances where we as a library we can provide financial support, along with others to the digital Jean McManus: Nation and the hosting example of that where we have contributed financially, but the digitization, the quality control the hosting is done in a centralized way through the Catholic news archive and that is a beautiful thing. We don’t have to Jean McManus: In our in our home institutions. We don’t have to be concerned about that we do it collectively Jean McManus: So the image on this page is of the American Newsstand, I don’t have actual details about where this is. But, and that’s a bit of a gesture toward Jean McManus: The kind of diversity, we’d like to include in the future where we would like to explore digitizing German American Catholic newspapers, of which there were a robust number Jean McManus: From the late 19th century into the early to mid 20th century on pretty much an undiscovered or little us because it’s Jean McManus: Her film and also in German language, but a resource that could contribute to that larger, greater good.

25:05 - Jean McManus: So we’re on to the next slide, I believe Paul Paul Bracke: Alright, so I’m going to wrap up. Just very briefly with with with just some brief remarks about a couple of our future directions. And then we should have a few minutes yet for questions. Paul Bracke: So you know as much as far as we’ve come with the with the archive. You know, there’s of course there’s always more to do. And, you know, the main thing I’d like to leave you with on this is that we’re, we’re always trying to Paul Bracke: To make sure that we make this as useful to scholars as possible. And so there are a number of features that we’re trying to do, you know, ranging from, you know, adding additional content to things like Paul Bracke: Making it easier to do text mining or do bulk downloading of content from from the archive. Paul Bracke: But one of the things that we’d really like to invite both those of you who are in the audience today, but also those of you who might be watching this after the fact to do is to give us some feedback on what might be particularly useful to you. Paul Bracke: Either in terms of content or in terms of functionality. And so there’s a survey link here that we’d we’d really appreciate it if you could give us some some input on Paul Bracke: And then the other thing and just to reiterate a point that gene made Paul Bracke: In her in her remarks, is that we are really very interested in expanding inclusion within the collection and making sure that the wide range of voices that are part of the Catholic community in North America are represented within the Catholic news archives Paul Bracke: So with that of our present. That’s our presentation. And we’ll open it for questions.

26:40 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Thank you, Paul and gene for that really interesting presentation on that. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Wonderful resource we appreciate you coming to CNI to talk to us about that. And thanks to our attendees for joining us here this afternoon. If you’re on the east coast. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): And I’d like to open up the floor now for questions or comments relating to this topic, so please go ahead and type your questions now into the Q AMP a box and I’ll be happy to share those with our presenters. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): And while we are waiting for folks to mull over what they’ve just heard.

27:28 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): I just was wondering, I realized this resources, a North American resource. Are there any thoughts about going international with this. Paul Bracke: You know I Paul Bracke: There have not. I think that there’s been some interest. So, you know, Jennifer younger for templates has indicated that there might be some interest in thinking about other, you know, really, we say North American. But really what’s in the archive is is us. Paul Bracke: Newspapers at this point. Paul Bracke: So I think that there’s interesting in looking at Canada and Mexico and the Caribbean certainly beyond that. I’m not so sure. Okay. Not it.

28:15 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): And I’m about how many newspapers are in it right now. Paul Bracke: So right now it’s 17 newspapers. And as I mentioned, those are from, you know, those represents, you know, much of the geography of the US, they re they represent different time periods from, you know, the 19th, early 19th century through the, through the 20th century. Paul Bracke: You know some of those or national newspaper’s the Catholic Worker, for example, which are major socialist newspaper Paul Bracke: In the UK Jennifer’s jumped in here too. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Yes, I just turned on Jennifer’s microphone.

So, Jennifer, I see you made a comment in the chat. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): But please feel free to share that comment with us if you’d like. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): I’ll just read that allowed Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Well, Jennifer, if she wants to join in, please do. Jennifer rights. Yes, we know there’s interest among French Chilean and other Latin American countries. Money is the only obstacle Canada papers on the on the agenda now. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): So, okay. So you were asking me to share that. Okay, got it. No problem.

29:31 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): If you want to jump in, please feel free to do so at any time. Jean McManus: I will comment that Jean McManus: The Catholic News Service news feed, which is Jean McManus: digitize and fully in the in the Catholic news archive is interesting in that. That includes say Dispatches from Rome and and the like. So there’s Jean McManus: A it didn’t, it is a new service. And so there’s services, in a way, a bit of an index to national and also to a certain extent international Catholic news.

So that’s been a very interesting addition to the roster of newspapers. Jean McManus: And also the Catholic news and pictures is Jean McManus: Is very Jean McManus: Popular and Jean McManus: We’ve found uses for this with a number of different audiences, of course, researchers and college students are among the big users as far as I’m concerned, and as far as I observed Jean McManus: But also with younger students. We’ve had interest from high schools in the area around our institution and we’ve had some pretty good success with pushing it out to people the more visual, the better in some cases for for our younger researchers. Yeah. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): That’s, that’s great, great to hear. We have a question coming in now from Nathan girth.

31:15 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Nathan asks, firstly comments. It’s great. It’s great to see these materials being captured with so many participating organizations, can you talk about how you handle the challenges of governance. Paul Bracke: Sure, yeah. So we have a number of we have several governance bodies within that work with the project. Paul Bracke: Overall overall management of anything CRA happens at the board of that of that of the parent organization. But there’s also a newspapers project committee that is part of of specific the CNA Camaro gene. If you’re on that.

31:58 - Paul Bracke: There’s a scholars committee that that we work with, you know, faculty and historians and such, who might want to use that to get feedback from that perspective. Paul Bracke: And then there’s also a group of the publishing partners that that we work with. And really, when I say we, that’s really the executive director doing a lot of that work. Okay, thank you. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Yeah, thanks. Nathan for that question. We also have another comment from Jennifer relating back to the question from before. And she says 85% of use. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Comes from the US. The remainder comes from the UK European countries African countries, Indonesia and the Philippines, so that’s that’s not an insignificant amount of international interest in the tool, really interesting. All right. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): Well, I don’t see any more questions coming in right now, and we are actually at time so Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): I’ll go ahead and bring the public version, the public portion of this presentation to a close by stopping the recording. But I’ll invite our attendees who are still here. Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): If you are interested in hanging around. We can unmute you. You can approach the podium and have a chat with our presenters.

33:21 - Diane Goldenberg-Hart (CNI): make comments. Ask questions as you like. So once again, thank you so much, Paul. And gene for coming to see an eye and sharing your project with us. It was really a pleasure to hear about. And thank you to all of our attendees. Take care everyone. Bye bye. Jean McManus: Thanks very much. .