Back in 2017, Columbus Dispatch librarian Julie Fulton approached the Columbus Historical Society to see if it would take hundreds of bound volumes of old Columbus newspapers that the Dispatch wanted out of its printing plant.
The danger to the volumes, which took enough space to fill a basement the size of Rhode Island, wasn’t spelled out specifically, but it was implied: If you don’t take these, I don’t know who will.
The Dispatch kept the old Dispatches (go figure), but wanted the others – Ohio State Journals, Columbus Citizens, Columbus Citizen-Journals, Columbus Press-Posts – off the floor and out of the building, presumably so they could build shuffle board courts or something.
Simply taking them was a massive undertaking. CHS board members recruited help wherever they could find it – a couple of my neighbors even pitched in – and we formed a line outside of the current CHS building on West Town Street, starting at the ends of the trucks and vans that brought them here. (Yes, we also loaded the trucks and vans.) The lines stretched down the stairs and into the basement (see basement above), where the volumes were handed one by one down the steps and into their new home.
Many if not most of the volumes are already on microfilm, so there were a lot of questions about their value. If they’re on microfilm, why do we need the actual newspapers, right?
Well, today, I have an example why: I’m currently working on a story on the Harrison house for the new CHS journal that we will be announcing soon (oops, I mean that we might be announcing), and there was a photo of a house that has a place in that story that appeared in the April 1, 1906, Ohio State Journal when they were tearing that house down.
I have a microfilm copy of that picture, but the microfilm image is terrible, as they often are, and makes the house look like it is standing in a storm that is raining tar.
But wait. We have volumes of the 1906 Ohio State Journals in that basement. After a mission of discovery that would have impressed Henry Hudson, I found the volume, found the page and took a photo of the picture that is good enough to print in a CHS journal, uh, if we ever have one.
Now that we have a good image of that house, all of that back breaking labor was worth every second, wasn’t it, fellas?
Fellas?
