How can I find historical Alaskan weather?

Here in Juneau, we're constantly talking about the weather, even though it's pretty consistent, especially this summer (read: so.much.rain). But what if you want to know what the weather was in the past?

We recently had a question like this from a patron looking for the weather on the day he was born. He asked that we send him the weather section from the newspaper in the town where he lived. That was a great idea. It worked especially well because there was a big storm on his birthday so there was a full article on the weather. We have one of the most complete Alaska newspaper microfilm collections in the world and our microfilm scanners make it easy to scan an article and send it by email.

Juneau's weather report from Wednesday, September 13, 1916 as reported in The Alaska Daily Empire.

You can also find historical weather information from the National Weather Service, although the amount of information may differ depending on the local forecast office. Let's say I wanted to know what the weather was like in Nome fifty years ago. When I looked up Nome, it said that the local forecast office is in Fairbanks, with a link on the right side. Then I went to Climate and Past Weather.

The local forecast office page for Fairbanks. There is a link to Climate and Past Weather at the top of the page.

From the Climate and Past Weather page, you can find a tab called NOWData, which stands for NOAA Online Weather Data.

In NOWData, you can select the location and information type. Several of the options will give you historical weather data in various formats, so it's up to you which product type you select. I chose the Daily Almanac for September 13, 1967, which shows the high, low, and average temperature, precipitation, snowfall, and snow depth. It also provides the record highs and lows for the observation period, which goes back to the 1890s for many Alaskan locations.

The Daily Almanac for September 13, 1967 shows that the high temperature was 55, low was 36, and there was no precipitation or snowfall.

Guest post: Historic Alaskan newspapers online with Leah Geibel

Imagine firing up your computer, opening your web browser, and with the click of a button, searching through 100,000 pages of digitized Alaskan historical newspapers from the comfort of your home. Whether for historical research, genealogy, or school projects, this will soon become a reality for Alaskans with the Alaska State Library’s participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

National Digital Newspaper Project Coordinator Leah Geibel, with her microfilm reader and project notes.

What is NDNP?
The National Digital Newspaper Program is a joint collaboration by the Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities dedicated to preserving and providing access to our nation’s historical newspapers through digitization and inclusion in Chronicling America, a freely accessible web-based text-searchable newspaper database.

AKDNP: Alaska’s Role in NDNP
The Alaska State Library is coming up on one year since its inclusion in NDNP – so what do we have to show for it? First, let’s start with the roles and responsibilities of the library, which will help explain where we are now and where we’re going in the future.

By the end of the grant cycle, in August 2018, the Alaska State Library will have digitized 100,000 pages of Alaskan historical newspapers from across the state ranging in date from 1898-1922. These pages will be sent to Library of Congress in 10,000 page batches which will then be made available free to the public on Chronicling America (see above section). This will involve two sections within the library, Historical Collections and the Micrographics Lab. Micrographics is responsible for creating preservation quality duplicates of all microfilm reels being digitized for the grant which will eventually make their way into the hallowed stacks of the Library of Congress as preservation copies. Historical Collections is in charge of day-to-day management of grant operations ranging from gathering page level metadata from the historical titles chosen, to shipping content to vendors for digitization and performing quality control checks, to managing outreach through social media and creating programs and content aimed at providing instruction awareness of Chronicling America as an instructional resource for researchers, educators, and students.

Jerry Duncan, Microfilm/Imaging Operator, duplicates reels of newspaper microfilm in the lab at the APK. The red light is safe to use without exposing the film.

What titles were selected for digitization and how were they picked?
There was a lot of time spent, effort organizing, and views debated before a final list of titles was chosen. A sixteen member advisory committee comprised of community members diverse in experiences, geographic locations, and professions, but united in their passion for preserving Alaska’s history was tasked with this very important aspect of the project. Several factors influenced their final title selection such as technical specifications provided by Library of Congress, geographic coverage of the paper, completeness of the paper (meaning we weren’t missing huge chunks of its run), date range, and diversity of viewpoints recorded within the paper. With over 300 titles to choose from, 10 were selected for digitization during this grant cycle which the committee members felt were papers of record, had close to complete runs, were diverse in geographical coverage, and fell within the specifications recommended by Library of Congress.

1. The Alaska daily empire (Juneau, AK ). 1912-1922
2. Douglas Island news (Douglas City, AK). 1898-1921
3. The Thlinget (Sitka, AK). 1908-1912
4. The daily Alaskan (Skagway, AK). 1898-1922
5. The Nome nugget (Nome, AK). 1901-1922
6. The Alaska prospector (Valdez, AK). 1902-1918
7. The Iditarod pioneer (Iditarod, AK). 1910-1919
8. The Cordova daily times (Cordova, AK). 1914-1922
9. The Seward gateway (Seward, AK). 1904-1922
10. The Alaska citizen (Fairbanks, AK). 1910-1920

Where are we now?
The first batch of digitized pages is now available on Chronicling America. It includes 1,206 issues of The Alaska Daily Empire (1912-1918), 448 issues of the Douglas Island News (1898-1907), and 47 issues of The Thlinget (1908-1912). These pages are free to search at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov. You can expect to see new batches of 10,000 pages go up monthly until we reach our 100,000 page limit.

The first page of the first issue of the Douglas Island News, November 23, 1898, viewable on Chronicling America.

Where are we going?

Anastasia Tarmann, the Alaska Digital Newspaper Project Director, has been meeting with educators to bring historic newspapers and other primary sources into the classroom, and plans to support other Alaska institutions with supplementary projects. We plan to continue educating Alaskans and other researchers on navigating Chronicling American and promoting NDNP through exhibits, social media, and public programs. We will also be focusing on reapplying for the next grant cycle, where we hope to extend our title selection to papers covering smaller, more diverse, and underrepresented communities!

Learn More & Follow Along!
For frequent project updates and a behind the scenes look you can check out the Alaska Digital Newspaper Project’s blog at akdnp.wordpress.com

For project highlights, content features, photographs, contests and more follow the Alaska Digital Newspaper Project’s Instagram account @AlaskaHistoricalNewspapers

To contact the Project Coordinator for more information email Leah Geibel at leah.geibel@alaska.gov. To contact the Project Director, email Anastasia Tarmann at anastasia.tarmann@alaska.gov.

Thanks to Leah for contributing this guest post! Leah has been with the Library since February and is busy bringing historic Alaskan newspapers to you! As someone who spends a lot of time looking through Alaska newspaper microfilm, I'm thrilled that this project will make research easier. -Claire

How to move a library: Microforms

Now that it's 2016, our move is just around the corner. The Alaska State Library's Information Services section will be the last of our Division to move into the Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff State Library, Archives, and Museum. The latest word is that we will start moving in mid-April, and the facility should be ready to open by mid-May.

The APK building looking great on February 24, 2016. The only things missing from the front of the building are the doors, which are plywood.

Right now, we're preparing all of our microfilm and microfiche cabinets for refurbishing. We'll use them in the new building, but they need to be emptied so they can get cleaned, touched up, and painted. We will pack all the film and fiche in boxes and store them on pallets until moving time, so some of our microforms will be inaccessible for a few months. The Alaska newspaper microfilm, our most-used microform collection, will be the last packed and the first unpacked.

Library assistant Ginny Jacobs transfers a row of microfiche from drawer to box.

If the microfiche got out of order, it would be a major headache. To minimize the risk of a fiche-catastrophe, we ordered specially-sized boxes that fit one row of fiche. An additional benefit to this method is that one of these boxes is about as heavy as our staff would want to heft around. Each box is 6 inches tall and 6 inches wide, in three different lengths (16, 22, and 28 inches) to accommodate our varying cabinet sizes. Since fiche is about 5x6 inches, there's an inch of space at the top. That inch of air causes some concern that the boxes might crush during transport. We've arranged them like Lincoln Logs on the pallet for maximum stability, and will report back when we find out how it goes.

This pallet of microfiche is stacked, wrapped, labeled, and ready for moving. Although it looks like a small pallet-load, it is surprisingly heavy!

For microfilm, we are less concerned with interfiling, since the reels are in boxes. All of our cabinets are approximately the same length, so we ordered 28x12x6 inch boxes to accommodate three rows of microfilm. Although the drawers are five rows across, boxes for five rows would have been unwieldy and expensive. We've packed all of our federal and national newspaper microfilm, and it worked like a dream.

We purchased these boxes from ULINE, which has an impressive selection of sizes and shapes. All of the boxes we picked are top-loading, to make packing and unpacking easy. We considered modifying regular file boxes, like the AAA ones frequently used for moving offices, but found that it wouldn't save us money and would greatly slow down the packing process.

In other move news, we've selected locations for some of the notable features from our State Office Building location. The large relief map of Alaska that is hanging behind the Library's reference desk will be relocated to the OWL room in the new facility. The Rie Muñoz mural above the microfilm readers will move to the second floor atrium, near the Division's administration offices. Visitors will still be able to enjoy these favorites in their new home.

This relief map has been popular with Library visitors for years. It will be on view in the new Library and will make a great backdrop for OWL videoconferences.

Accessing Older Alaska Newspapers

Question: I am looking for an article published in a February 1966 issue of The Frontiersman.
Answer: The Alaska State Library holds microfilm of issues of The Frontiersman published in 1966. Information about our collection of Alaska Newspapers on microfilm is available at http://library.state.ak.us/hist/newspaper/newspaper.html.

You can place an ILL request for an article in The Frontiersman or the microfilm through your local library. Your local library then contacts us and we transmit the article or ship the film to your library for your review. We can loan up to four reels of our newspapers on microfilm to any single library at any one time.