A look back at Alaska's epidemics

Life during the coronavirus pandemic has inspired us to look back at how Alaskans handled outbreaks in the past through our collections.

1918 Influenza

This gossip column from the Alaska Daily Empire, November 16, 1918, proves that social distancing has been around for more than a hundred years.

The 1918 influenza epidemic has numerous parallels to today's coronavirus situation. Movement was restricted, quarantines imposed, and communities converted spaces into field hospitals and recovery wards. Helen Wilson, a teacher in Skagway, volunteered to cook and keep house at the White Pass Rooming House, which became an overflow area for flu patients. You can read her letter to her mother about bringing the cooked chicken she'd planned for a dinner to the Rooming House in a taxi with her oil stove strapped to the running board on Alaska's Digital Archives. Last week, Twitter user @alaskarobotics posted a round-up of flu-related (and some just humorous) snippets from Alaska newspapers that he found on Chronicling America.

1925 Diphtheria

Gunnar Kasson and Balto in their race to Nome. Alaska State Library Portrait File, ASL-Kasson-Gunnar.

Alaska's most famous epidemic may be the one that spurred the great serum run in 1925. Diphtheria broke out in Nome and the only option for transporting the antitoxin from Nenana was by dog sled. Mushers and their dogs, like Leonhard Seppala with Togo and Gunnar Kasson with Balto, braved gale force winds, -85 degree temperatures, and whiteout conditions to make the 674-mile delivery in 127.5 hours and become nationwide heroes. You can follow the mushers' progress through telegrams posted to Governor Scott C. Bone, from the governor's correspondence files digitized by the Alaska State Archives.

1940s-1950s Tuberculosis

An "itinerant" nurse with the Territorial Department of Health sees a young patient in Tanacross. Alaska State Library Historical Collections, ASL-P143-1018.

After World War II, tuberculosis was a major health crisis in Alaska. The Territorial Department of Health deployed mobile clinics, including a decommissioned military ship, two barges, two railway cars, and a truck, to rural communities to provide basic health care and training. Tuberculosis still took a heavy toll on Alaskans, and in 1946, a 150-bed tuberculosis sanitorium opened in Seward. Patients there published a newspaper called San Chat with patient spotlights, updates from former staff, and drawings, poems, and stories by residents.

Then, as now, Alaskans got through bad times by lending a helping hand, demonstrating their courage and perseverance, and using their resourcefulness and creativity to lift each other up.

More links:

• 1925 Serum Run resources from the Alaska State Archives
• The Floating Clinics: M/V Health and M/S Hygiene from LitSite Alaska
• Alaska's Digital Newspaper Program at the Alaska State Library

Fun times at the Fun with the Family Fair

Last week, we hosted the first ever Library, Archives, and Museum joint family day, the Fun with the Family Fair. Since we moved into our new building, the Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff State Library, Archives, and Museum, we've been trying to find ways to better collaborate with each other and to share our collections with Alaskans.

The Friends of the Alaska State Library, Archives, and Museum apply annually for a youth activity grant through the City and Borough of Juneau's Youth Activities program. This grant supports free opportunities for young people to learn artistic techniques from professional working artists and to connect with the exhibits and collections of the Library, Archives, and Museum.

Solo Artist Daniel Papke led a collage painting workshop in November 2017. Here, participants share their creations and their funniest faces.

The family fair was an extension of that program, but unlike most of the workshops, was completely homegrown. Our Division Operations Manager Lisa Golisek worked with doll artist Mary Ellen Frank to create chenille stem people, sled dogs, as well as kuspuks, robes, parkas, and accessories inspired by Alaska Native regalia and outerwear. This activity is a perennial favorite and frequently requested by our youth activity participants and parents.

              Volunteer Anne Fuller helps participants create chenille stem sled dogs.             

Sandy Johnston, Historical Library Assistant II, helps a young man create a chenille stem person.

Jackie Manning, Museum Curator of Exhibits, demonstrates how to make a kuspuk for the chenille stem figures.

Archivist Leah Geibel created a design your own flag activity based on the territorial flag competition in 1927, when 13-year old Benny Benson designed the eight stars of gold. A basic flag template, some submissions from the competition, and a few boxes of crayons were all that were needed for this station. It was great to have an activity appropriate for very young children.

Leah shows some samples from the territorial flag competition to some young flag designers.

Our Historical Collections has a great collection of early 3-D photo cards called stereograms or stereographs. These souvenir cards had two images taken from slightly different angles so that they create a 3-D effect when viewed with a stereogram viewer, and often featured stories or information on the back. Library Assistant Jacki Swearingen has worked extensively with the stereogram collection, even transforming some of them into anaglyphs, 3-D images viewed with red-blue glasses. She shared a selection of her favorites from the collection, many of which are more than 100 years old.

This is one of many stereogram cards from our collection. It shows President and Mrs. Harding visiting Metlakatla in 1923. Alaska State Library, PCA 418-22.

Kids created their own stereograms by setting up a diorama and then taking two pictures of the scene with a digital camera. These photos were then imported into Photoshop, dropped into a template with the arches, slightly edited by our volunteer Photoshop master Carl Brodersen, then printed. These were then cut out, glued onto cards, and tested out on the stereoviewer. We were amazed that they worked every time!

After the scenes were set up, the photos were taken, formatted, and printed, kids created their own stereogram card. These two even wrote stories for the reverse side.

Newspapers are a big part of our collections, and Technical Services Librarian Ginny Jacobs helped kids find the newspaper from the day they were born. We also had a newspaper printing station where kids could create their own paper using newsprint and rubber stamps. That turned out to be the messiest station!

Ginny looks over the newspaper production area after showing kids the newspaper from their birthdays.

Historic salmon can labels from the Alaskan canning industry are one thing that is held in all of our collections. Museum Registrar Andrew Washburn created templates and led children in an exploration of marketing and graphic design techniques. They even got to take their designs home on their own cans.

          Andrew offers options to participants ready to affix their labels to their cans.         

One station that was unexpectedly popular was a create-your-own-activity, which we stocked with magazines, glue sticks, colored paper, scissors, and crayons. Kids let their imaginations run free and came up with their own works of art.

Thanks to everyone who came by on their last day of winter break to spend the afternoon with us at the family fair! We had such a fun day with all of you. To find out about our next youth activity, visit our youth art activity web page.

The youth activity program at the APK is sponsored by the Friends of the Alaska State Library, Archives, and Museum and is partially funded by the citizens of the City and Borough of Juneau through sales tax revenues.

Using Alaska newspapers for research

A few months ago, Alaska's National Digital Newspaper Project Coordinator Leah Geibel wrote us a guest post about the first batch going online. Now that we've had a chance to explore the site a little more, we're very excited to put it to use.

The Alaska State Library has one of the most complete collections of Alaska newspapers on microfilm, and they are fantastic primary resources that document the lives of 19th, 20th, and 21st century Alaskans. However, anyone who's tried it will tell you that searching through microfilm is a long and tedious process. Librarians and historians in the past have done great work creating indexes to make the newspaper collection accessible, and we continue to use those resources nearly every day. Betty Miller's incredible five-volume masterpiece, Vital Records from Alaska Daily Empire 1916-1936, is a lifesaver for researchers. But what if you're less interested in the birth, death, and marriage information and want more day-to-day articles?

Mickey and Issie Goldstein eating lunch on ice at Auk [sic] Lake 1916. Alaska State Library Historical Collections, PCA 329-30.

That's where the digitized newspapers on Chronicling America can help. We recently looked into the life of former Juneau mayor Isadore Goldstein. There was a brief entry in Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers and our Historical Collections had a slim biography file on him. There were also a few pictures of him on the Alaska Digital Archives, which is certainly more than you'd find in your average genealogy search. But searching the Alaska newspapers on Chronicling America provides 100 results that shed more light on Mr. Goldstein's life as a young man and on Juneau's history.

This short article about Goldstein's grizzly bear hunt is from the Alaska Daily Empire from June 17, 1913.

On August 13, 1915, the Alaska Daily Empire described Goldstein's late-night attempt to prevent a "robbery."

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that sometimes Mr. Goldstein's first name is abbreviated to Isa. To capture both variants, you can use Chronicling America's Advanced Search features. You can also search phrases or for terms within 5-100 words from each other.

Entering "Isa Isadore" in the first box and "Goldstein" in the second box brings up results with (Isa OR Isadore) AND Goldstein.

Chronicling America features a selection of Alaska newspapers published before 1923, an interesting time in Alaska's history. It includes the gold rush, the Alaska Organic Acts, World War I, and the sinking of the Princess Sophia. We look forward to more pages and more titles being added as the project continues.

For more information about Alaska's National Digital Newspaper Program, visit our historical newspapers site, or follow the project's blog or Instagram at @alaskahistoricalnewspapers.

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

New resource for Juneau genealogists

Recently, I posted about the Evergreen Cemetery map, a great tool for genealogists and local researchers. Today I'm highlighting another newly digitized resource: the Vital Records, an index to births, deaths, and marriages listed in the Alaska Daily Empire (predecessor to the Juneau Empire) and the Weekly Douglas Island Newspaper from 1898 to 1936. You can find the digital version on our website.

The six volumes of the Vital Records are the result of fifteen years of work by local historian Betty Miller. Each volume consists of two parts - the first is an alphabetical list of all the names referenced in the volume and the second is a chronological list of the events with the page and column where the article was printed.

The paper volumes of Vital Records from Alaska Daily Empire are well-used items in our genealogy section. The ability to search them digitally will speed up our research.

Although the digitized Vital Records are a valuable resource on their own, they work best in conjunction with the Alaska State Library's newspaper microfilm collection. Now you can search for a name, find the date, page, and column number for an article about that person, and then read the article in the Alaska Daily Empire or the Weekly Douglas Island Newspaper. We have four microfilm scanners that allow you to print, email, or scan to a flash drive or the cloud, making microfilm research easier than ever.

The Alaska Daily Empire is one of hundreds of Alaskan newspapers available in our microfilm collection.

Some Alaska newspaper microfilm is available for lending through interlibrary loan, so even if you can't make it to an Alaska library, you can find historic articles about your Alaskan ancestors. Ask your local library for more information.

Learn more:

• Betty Miller wrote a short biography about her life and her work on the Vital Records. A longer bio about her family was published in Gastineau Channel Memories, Volume I.
• The Alaska Newspaper Project microfilmed all the known Alaskan newspapers and created microfilm repositories at the Alaska State Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks Rasmuson Library, and University of Alaska Anchorage Consortium Library.

Alaska's African American Newspapers

Question: I would also be interested to know what black newspapers have been published in the state/territory of Alaska.

Answer: The Alaska State Library’s Guide to Alaska Newspapers on Microfilm identifies these titles as African American newspapers:

• Anchorage Gazette
• Anchorage Spotlight
• Anchorage Town Crier
• Crusader
• Midnight Sun Reporter
• New Horizon
• North Star Reporter
• Vox Populi

You can find more information about these titles in the Guide (linked above), under the "Anchorage" heading. The Alaska State Library’s collections include some issues of these newspapers on microfilm, but coverage is incomplete. Another post on this blog describes how to request our microfilm through interlibrary loan.

Aviation Accidents and Incidents

Question: A relative of mine was involved in a plane crash near Juneau in the summer of 1987. Where can I find more information about the crash?

Answer: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) publish information about aviation accidents and incidents. You can search NTSB’s Accident Database and Synopses, which covers aviation accidents and some incidents occurring after 1962, at http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/Query.asp. Available data includes type of aircraft, date and location, airline, type of air carrier operation, severity of any injuries, NTSB’s report status, and preliminary or final report. The full reports are generally not available for events occurring before 1993. Selected major accidents occurring more than ten years ago are also listed at http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/A_Acc2.htm. NTSB retains detailed records and files relating to its accident investigations. For information about reviewing and ordering these documents, see http://www.ntsb.gov/info/sources.htm#PIB.

If the “crash” you are researching was not investigated by NTSB, you may find it in the FAA’s Accident/Incident Data System (AIDS), at http://www.nasdac.faa.gov/. At this page, select the Data & Information tab, then the link for the Accident/Incident Data System. This database covers general aviation and commercial air carrier incidents since 1978. FAA defines “incidents” as “events that do not meet the aircraft damage or personal injury thresholds contained in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) definition of an accident.”

In addition, you may find articles about the crash in the Juneau Empire or other Alaska newspapers. We have an extensive collection of Alaska newspapers on microfilm. More information about our newspaper collection, including information about ordering microfilm through interlibrary loan, is available on this blog at http://askasl.blogspot.com/search/label/newspapers.

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.