Glenbard North now has a digital archive of its 51-year history
All the issues of Glenbard North's school newspaper the North Current are now accessible online through a digital archive at tinyurl.com/ncdigitalarchive.
Ever since the school first opened in 1968, the North Current school newspaper has been printing out issues of quality journalism.
Generations of student journalists have covered social events, societal trends, individual accomplishments, and community issues throughout the school's 51 years.
Each of the 412 issues are a historical record of what it was like in the past at Glenbard North and in the suburban communities, like Carol Stream, where the students lived. The school newspaper covered what students saw and experienced of the times from the Vietnam War, Watergate, the diversification of the school, the urbanization of what used to be rural Carol Stream, the issues at Glenbard District 87, the victories of the school wrestling team, and so much more.
The yearlong project to create a publicly-accessible digital archive of the North Current involved acquiring every single issue published, cataloging each issue, creating a safe and permanent place for a physical archive in Glenbard North, and carefully scanning each publication to the highest quality settings.
By going to tinyurl.com/ncdigitalarchive, anyone can access the newspaper from the first to latest issue.
Since they have been scanned to the highest quality settings, the pictures are as vivid and sharp to the same quality as the printed versions. In addition, each issue is in searchable PDF format where names and keywords and phrases can be looked up. For MacIntosh users, selecting the Command and F buttons after clicking the PDF copy of a particular issue will cause a search box to appear on the top right screen. In that search box, one can type in a name or a topic, and after clicking enter, the system will automatically highlight where in that issue that key word or phrase appears in. For PC users, pressing Control and F will activate this feature.
Currently this digital archive is housed in an open Google Drive folder, and the next step is to have a professional means of containing the archives through a proper website.
Jeromel Lara, the newspaper's archivist behind the North Current Digital Archive, said, "I would like to offer my sincere gratitude, on behalf of our publication, to the community groups that offered their experts, people, advice, and their connections for this project such as the Carol Stream Historical Society, the Glenside Public Library District, and the Carol Stream Public Library. To the Glenbard North and Carol Stream community that have read our issues, supported us, and allowed us to keep printing issues through funds and donations, may this digital archive and its purpose of preserving history and memories be a token of our appreciation and service.
"We will press on in updating this digital archive with the issues that we will continue to publish in the future, documenting the people and trends of Glenbard North and Carol Stream," Lara continued.