By Erin Walden
NEW ALBANY — On April 1, 1947, the second edition of The Southeastern Student was released to students and staff at Indiana University Southeast. The edition, an early ancestor of today’s student newspaper, The Horizon, consisted of school reminders, updates on the employment of alumni and statistics on a recent basketball tournament in Bloomington. That student publication, just two pages long and without photographs or design elements, paved the way for more than seven decades of student work.
The bulk of those publications (1947-2007) have been digitized and are available online thanks to grants from the Horseshoe Foundation of Floyd County and Indiana University Bicentennial.
A celebration of this feat is planned Monday from 3 to 4 p.m. at the campus library in room LB235.
“We are celebrating because now everyone has access to it,” Melanie Hughes, coordinator of automation and technical services for the IU Southeast library, said.
Interesting editions from the years will be highlighted and there will be guest speakers during the event, Hughes said. Some of those editions include coverage of actor Vincent Price when he visited the campus, a profile on Olympic swimmer and former Grenadier Camille Wright and a story on the campus move from Jeffersonville to its current New Albany location.
Floyd County Historian Dave Barksdale helped the library obtain the Horseshoe Foundation grant and says that the digitizing provides for greater access to those papers.
“It’s a great resource to have,” he said. “I think they’re very fortunate to have those papers and to me digitizing is the best thing for them.”
Barksdale said in his role of historian he often turns to newspapers of the past. The digitizing of the New Albany Tribune, available through the Floyd County Library, has made his research much easier to do.
“Maybe in years to come they might be very popular with people looking back and trying to figure out what they were doing in 1947 at IU Southeast,” Barksdale said.
To check out the library online, head to libguides.ius.edu/studentnewspapers.
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