The News Review celebrated its 84th birthday on November 24, and completion of the paper’s digital archive project was surely the highlight of the year. The last batch of newly digitized issues was uploaded to the News Review server in mid-October, and the complete set of issues can now be viewed at greenbeltnewsreview.com/archives. The Greenbelt Archive Project (greenbeltarchive.org), assisted by staff from University of Maryland Libraries, scanned newsprint originals of all papers produced before early 2002, after which the papers were “born digital” (i.e., created electronically), compiled the scanned pages into a pdf file for each issue of the paper and ran an optical character recognition process on the pdfs so the text can be digitally searched and copied.
The papers were uploaded also to the Internet Archive: archive.org/details/greenbelt-news-review?&sort=date (that last bit orders them by publication date), an online library whose content can be uploaded and stored at no cost and is freely accessible to the public. Having the full set of papers on more than one server and website makes them more secure, and Internet Archive may be better equipped than the News Review to maintain digital media into the future. The two websites also have different display and search capabilities.
The News Review encourages readers to use the digital archive to discover their Greenbelt roots. The paper (originally named Greenbelt Cooperator, but changed to Greenbelt News Review in 1954) published its first issue less than two months after the first residents moved in, so has documented local news and community life since Greenbelt’s beginnings. Any resident can learn about what was happening when they arrived in Greenbelt by reading issues from that time. The News Review Archives webpage is easy to use for this purpose, and it displays the digital papers in a near full-screen format that is easy to read.
Research Your Family
Greenbelters with relatives who were resident here before their own arrival can search for information about them in the digital archive. In recent years, the Our Neighbors column mostly offers condolences. In the past this column, which first appeared in the January 2, 1941, Cooperator, was often packed full of news about what residents were doing, providing a rich resource for anyone researching family history. Even before Our Neighbors appeared, the Cooperator regularly mentioned the names of residents as they became involved in clubs, offered decorating tips or recipes, hosted guests, made out-of-town trips, etc. And letters to the editor reveal their views on various topics.
Research Your Home
Residents of the Greenbelt Homes, Inc. (GHI) housing cooperative have links to Greenbelt’s early years through their homes, and can conduct research to learn about the people who lived there before them. For some, the Hi, Neighbor! column may be useful to anchor the search. Hi, Neighbor! first appeared in the Cooperator on January 30, 1942, after people started moving into the newly built defense housing (GHI’s frame units), and ran into July 1945, reporting not just new arrivals but departures and moves within the community.
To provide an example, and perhaps motivate others, this reporter researched the roots of her own GHI home, and quickly found that the first president of the Greenbelt Citizen’s Association lived there and that at least two previous residents had been on the Cooperator staff, which was gratifying to learn. And she confirmed that Eleanor Roosevelt stopped by, in December 1937, because she wanted to see “one of these houses being used, being lived in.” Information on her home’s previous residents was found through the 1960s, after which addresses weren’t printed with resident names because of privacy concerns. Many of us know the names of people who lived in our homes since then because we still occasionally receive mail for them or some of our neighbors knew them. GHI does not routinely provide members with the names of previous residents.
Search Tips
This reporter had a lot of fun doing this research and it didn’t take very long. A tip for anyone else who wishes to research their family or GHI home is to search in the News Review collection on the Internet Archive (IA), if possible on a computer with a large monitor – use one of the Greenbelt Library’s computers if you don’t otherwise have access to one. Type the person’s name or the GHI address (use court-unit format) in the search bar and check Text Contents below the bar. IA brings up all issues in which it finds the search term, capsulizing the text around it beneath the thumbnail image of each issue. This is the first occurrence found, so be sure to click on the image to display the text around other occurrences of the search term (in a section to the left of the displayed paper). IA also marks the pages the search term occurs on, highlighting it in pale lavender.
Note, though, that the text recognition is not perfect, so a search will likely bring up some spurious text that has nothing to do with your family member or home address, or it may miss some occurrences. Still, searches certainly will find some items of interest. Once familiar with the digital archive, researchers may be drawn to learn other things about Greenbelt, which will surely distract them in the search for their roots. For questions or further assistance, contact newsreview.archive@gmail.com.
Acknowledgments
The Prince George’s County Council provided substantial support for the digital archive project through a non-departmental grant and grants from the offices of Councilmembers Todd Turner, Mel Franklin and Calvin Hawkins. We also are grateful for a grant from the Greenbelt Community Foundation, donations from community members and the use of a small workroom in the Community Center, all of which enabled the project to start work in 2018. We thank the volunteers who helped with various tasks throughout the project.
Deanna Dawson was the coordinator of the Greenbelt Archive Project.
