The Springfield News may be closed, but the photographic and paper archives will keep Springfield’s history alive at the Knight Library. Reporters at the Springfield News found out the paper, which had been having financial problems for some time, was closing just a few days before it shut down on October 20. Lee Enterprises, the company that owned the Springfield News, had tried to sell the paper but was unsuccessful and decided to close it down, Former Springfield News government reporter Michael Booth said.
Booth said the attitude had been that the staff was trying to turn the paper around in its last few months. He began working at the paper as an intern in December 2005 and was hired on as a staff reporter during his internship.
He said the paper went from a bi-weekly to a weekly shortly after he started and the staff had cut down to 160 hours per week for the entire news staff combined. Despite the work to cut corners, the news of the closure was not unexpected, he said.
“I don’t think anyone was surprised,” Booth said. “When you have a corporate owned newspaper and one is loosing money, something drastic is going to happen.”
Three months ago, the Knight Library became aware that the newspaper was looking for a home for its photographic archives, said James Fox, Head of Special Collections. He said that when the library contacted an editor, it became clear that the photo collections needed to be stored in state-of-the-art facilities such as those at the library.
At the time, the Springfield News was storing the photographs in the same closet where they housed their servers, said Normandy Helner, access and preservation officer for the library. While the closet was the best storage available, the library is able to keep them in a controlled vault where the temperature and humidity levels are constantly monitored, she said.
Helner said photographs need to be stored below “50 percent relative humidity,” which is closely maintained in the vault. Storing photos in a vault like the one at the library can extend their life for “hundreds of years,” Helner said. The vault has dehumidifiers and its own air conditioner because the photos also have to stay cool.
Fox said the library is known around the state because its photo-storage vault is one of the only facilities like it in the state.
Photos stay in good condition if they are kept in stable environments.
“The real killer is if the conditions keep changing,” Helner said.
Fox said the photographic archive is very exciting because it contains pictures from time periods during which it is very hard to find photos.
“This collection is very rich in those for our area,” he said. “It really captures the history of Springfield in the ’70s and ’80s.”
Fox said the library is very pleased to have received the archive because it tells the story of the area’s recent history and is a unique “continuous record” of a mill town.
“In a lot of ways, Springfield is a window into a lot of factory and mill towns,” he said.
Following the recent closure of the Springfield News, the library acquired the paper’s bound archives, which will eventually be put onto microfilm as part of the library’s Oregon Newspaper Project.
Booth said the staff at the paper began packing things up for the archive as soon as they found out the paper was closing because they wanted to make sure the historical information was not lost.
Both Fox and Helner stressed that items in the special collections are there for anyone who needs them for research. While the Springfield News archives are not yet available for public use, they will eventually be there for anyone who needs them, Helner said.
“We work actively to allow people to come look at materials,” she said. “We’re all about taking care of the stuff and getting it into people’s hands.”
Fox said the library’s special collections department is there to help any Oregonian research. He said the Springfield News archives will help meet those needs and that he is excited about the possibilities for the material. The library staff does not yet know exactly what is available, as they have not yet looked through the entire archive.
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