Orville Wright, 1927
Wright State University staff members are busy sifting through photos of Orville Wright, Matilda Dunbar and the Beatles. They’re organizing the last 100 years of our region’s history as they process material from the Dayton Daily News archive, which is now housed in the university’s library.
They’ve also created a blog to chronicle the preservation and organization of the archives. Posts highlight important historical events or people, and often include galleries of images from the archives.
“The Dayton Daily News archive is a gold mine of local, regional and national history,” said Dawne Dewey, head of Wright State Special Collections and Archives. “This is a great opportunity to make this enormous treasure of Dayton’s history widely available to the Miami Valley.”
In 2009, the Dayton Daily News announced that it would donate its entire archive of historical newspapers and photographs to the Wright State University Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives, doubling the size of the university’s archives.
The university received a major grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to hire a full-time archivist, Bill McIntire, to oversee the project. After completing an inventory of the entire collection, McIntire, graduate assistant Phillip Elam and other staff from the archive began organizing the archives.
“Its size and the preservation issues that news clippings and photos present make it the largest and most challenging project we have ever undertaken,” said Dewey.
Circus parade in the streets of Dayton, 1899
Arriving in several hundred filing cabinets and storage boxes, the Dayton Daily News archive contains 3–4 million items, including photographs, bound newspapers, news clippings and microfilm from the Dayton Daily News and the former Journal Herald.
All of this material must be catalogued and organized before the archives can be made available to researchers and the public, a process that will take about two years. In the meantime, the archives staff takes daily requests for materials from the Dayton Daily News newsroom.
Of all the treasures in the collection, McIntire said he most enjoys the photos of important figures who have visited Dayton over the years.
“I am literally processing the history of Dayton and that is very rewarding,” said McIntire.
Wright State’s Special Collections and Archives was established in 1969 and maintains world-class collections in aviation history, along with extensive collections of local and regional history. The Wright State archives are dedicated to the collection and preservation of the documentation of greater Dayton’s history. It also provides access and service to researchers from the campus, the local community and beyond.
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- A stranded car during the blizzard of 1978
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- Circus parade in the streets of Dayton, 1899
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- The first Frigidaire refrigerator built in Dayton, 1921
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- A crowd bids farewell to civil rights marchers, Yellow Springs, 1963
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- Crowds hope to catch a glimpse of actress Shirley Temple outside the Loews Theater in 1955.
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- Charles F. Kettering’s office at NCR, circa 1906
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- Matilda Dunbar, mother of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, in 1932
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- Orville Wright, 1927
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- Rike’s parking garage during the Bicentenial Parade in 1976.
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- The Beatles emerge from their airplane at Lunken Airport in Cincinnati for a 1964 local concert.
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- Workers hoist the sculptured facade of the Victoria Theater on July 11, 1989
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