This summer, I’ll be indexing all of the issues of The Trail from the 1960s. Even though it’s just one decade of the run of this student newspaper, that means indexing approximately 500 issues all by myself so I’m sure I’ll have my hands full. I’ll also be doing some research on how students wrote about the assassinations of public figures during the 1960s (e.g. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy).
Here are some photographs from my first day in the Archives & Special Collections. I spent my day getting acquainted with how things work here and doing some research on indexing methods past and present:
I picked up the indexes for The Times and The New York Times just to see examples of how newspapers have been indexed over time. The Times index looks basically like a book index with normal sized font, no surprises there. However, The New York Times index is different…much different:
Look at how tiny that font is! Above are the first of multiple pages under the heading “Government”. They packed some major text on those pages.
Here’s a close-up:
Unlike (most) book indexes, there’s a description of each location listing, which is pretty useful. However, the locations are just mixed in with the descriptions and many of the descriptions make very little sense, so all told it’s not a super user friendly index. At least it’s all online now, and much easier to use.
Side note: The New York Times index was handwritten, in the same format, from the paper’s start in 1851 until 1913. HANDWRITTEN. I’ll just have to keep that in mind if my job ever feels tedious; no matter how much I feel like complaining, at least I’m not the person who had to hand write The New York Times index.
By Jillian Zeidner