Does anybody have a copy of the June 2, 1969, Evanston Review?
That missing issue is the only one Evanston librarians need to finish off a complete digitized set of the local newspaper that spans nearly a century.
“There were about 5,000 issues of the Review published since 1925, and we are down to only one,” said librarian Jeffrey Garrett.
Archivists have spent the past year locating and digitizing the Review and several newspapers that covered the city’s African American community. A significant amount of new content from the newspapers was loaded onto the Evanston Public Library’s website earlier this month by Newsbank, a publisher that specializes in digitizing historical newspapers.
They are available at the EPL website to anyone with an Evanston library card. All the online newspapers are searchable. So if you type in your address, for instance, you will find all the stories written about your house – and also real estate ads.
The library held about 80% of the Review’s issues when the digitalization project began. Microfilm of the missing 1,000 issues was found at the Evanston History Center, Northwestern University and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. The Lincoln library made microfilm copies of papers across the state and kept an extra copy.
Seeking ‘the golden spike’
Volume 1, No. 1 of the Evanston Review was published on June 4, 1925. The paper was a weekly until April 22, 1968, when it began being published every Monday and Thursday. It returned to a weekly format on Nov. 5, 1970. It is now owned by Chicago Tribune Media Group.
After archivists tallied up all the Reviews for digitization, they found they were missing only one issue.
Garrett hopes the June 2, 1969, newspaper is in the home of an Evanston resident. “Perhaps they kept it to mark the birth of a baby or an anniversary.”
If it can be located soon, it will be digitized and added to the online collection.
“I call it the golden spike,” he said.
Anyone with the newspaper, or any leads, should contact Garrett at jgarrett@cityofevanston.org.
Gathering historic African American papers
In addition, the library is working with Dino Robinson, founder of the Shorefront Legacy Center, to gather missing newspapers that primarily covered Evanston’s African American community.
The library recently digitized issues from the Evanston Newsette, published during the 1940s to 1950; the Afro-Newsette, published from 1968; and Concerned Citizens Commitment, or CCC Newsette, published from 1971 to 1985.
“These papers are very important because the Evanston Review did not cover the African American community well,” Robinson said.
About 30 issues from the full runs of these papers are also missing. Anyone with leads should contact Robinson at dino@shorefrontlegacy.org. He has a list of what copies are needed.
Robinson has identified other African American newspapers that covered Evanston. Northwestern University has three issues of Afro-American Budget from 1898. No known copies exist of the North Shore Colored American from 1904. No copies exist of the Evanston Weekly, published from 1908 to 1924. Shorefront has two copies of the Reporter and Directory from 1909 to 1910. The Evanston History Center has one copy of the Evanston Guide from 1928 to 1932. And no copies exist of the Pythian “Pep” Review of 1938.
“We anticipate adding the digital files for several of these African American publications that appeared between 1872 and 1928,” Garrett said.
For the record, other papers covering the African American community were the Vel-Ton News, established in 1953; the North Shore Examiner, from 1968 to 1986; and the Evanston Sentinel, from 2000 to 2012.
In addition to the Evanston Review, the EPL website also includes the online newspaper Evanston Now, starting in 2007. And Evanston papers that preceded the Review are being added to the website in the next few weeks. They include: the Evanston Index, published from 1872 to 1914; a few issues of the Evanston Press, from 1888 to 1916; the Evanston News and Daily News, from 1909 to 1914; and the Evanston News-Index, from 1914 to 1935.
very exciting and thrilling development. Please just point out that it is public and freely available to Evanston library cardholders, but you must know and type in your library card number to access them. A lot of us don’t keep the number handy.
What about the Roundtable???