Every Trinity Tripod Issue from 1960-2008 Searchable
 |
This 1963 Trinity Tripod Mourns the Passing
of President John F. Kennedy, Jr. |
Hartford, Conn. –The Trinity College student newspaper,
The Trinity Tripod, has been digitized. Access to
The Trinity Tripod archives (.pdf files) from the years 1960-2008 is now available online at
http://library.trincoll.edu/tripod.htm. The archive is searchable by a name or keyword, and allows users to browse all issues from a particular year.
“I think
The Tripod provides a form of institutional memory,” said Amy Harrell, Music and Performing Arts Librarian at Trinity. “You can trace certain threads of debate that have happened on campus, and find insight on how the campus reacted to various world events.”
Harrell added that the digital archives will be of particular benefit to former
Tripod staff, alumni, athletes, theater majors, current students, historians, faculty, and staff. She said she noticed recurring themes covered by the students including food quality, parking issues, and campus climate reports, and sees great potential in how the archives can be referenced.
“This has research value,” she said. “It can be useful to see how major national events were portrayed in the student newspaper.”
The project was the culmination of a year’s worth of planning and work, starting with the scanning of the text based on bound copies of the newspaper by Innovative Document Imaging (IDI) of East Brunswick, New Jersey, quality control reviews by Peter Knapp ‘65, Special Collection Librarian and College Archivist, and the mounting of the files in a publicly accessible database by Harrell, and Lynn Fahy, Catalog Librarian.
“Access to issues from 1960 to 2008 online is a major step forward for the College Archives in efforts to preserve Trinity-related material of historical importance, particularly material written and compiled by undergraduates,” Knapp said. “In 1960,
The Tripod began to be printed on newspaper stock, which deteriorates, and research use of the original issues has been problematic for some time. Digitizing
The Tripod eliminates this difficulty, broadens and simplifies access, and allows searching of the text.”
The initial span of years was chosen by the Library staff based on frequency of use and preservation concerns over the quality of newsprint used when the Tripod was printed. If successfully received, the Library will look into expanding the coverage dates in the future and inclusion of other College publications.
The Tripod has been the student newspaper at Trinity College since 1904. It is the first college in Connecticut to digitize their college newspaper since Yale University digitized
The Yale Daily News in May, 2009. There are no access restrictions.