Want to learn more about SLO County history? Here’s where to start
When I started Photos From the Vault in Nov. 13, 2007, I had modest expectations tor the column.
It was part of a newsroom-wide experiment in blogging as a form of alternative storytelling.
Photos From the Vault would be long on pictures and short on writing —a quick hit of nostalgia and then I could get back to my day job as a Tribune photographer.
The Tribune had a closet full of negatives that dated back to the first full-time photographer the Telegram-Tribune hired in 1963. It seemed wasteful to let all those photos by talented staff members just sit on the shelf.
What I failed to realize is how deeply people are invested in the stories of their community.
They love old photos and often copy them to repost on social media without captions.
But when the story is not told, often people cobble together something to fill the void.
The phenomena first happened when I posted photos from a nuclear lab facility that was once located at Cal Poly. There were a couple of pictures and a brief caption based on the information in the image.
Quickly, people began arguing over the meaning of the pictures and I realized that I should have retrieved the story from microfilm.
Fortunately it was close to the date the negatives were filed.
Please do everyone a favor whenever you share an image and share the story behind it. People want the story as much as the photo.
This has been a journey of discovery, as I’ve learned how to find the story information that matches the images.
When the caption or date is missing, the search becomes much more complicated. Hilarity often ensues.
I was lucky to start Photos From the Vault in the era of spellcheck and an expanding archive of information on the internet.
Thanks also to the editors who helped me bring the Photos from the Vault concept to a more polished level — especially Sandra Duerr, Joe Tarica and Sarah Linn.
Almost weekly, The Tribune gets a request to help someone find a historical item. Unfortunately we don’t have a librarian to offer research help, but there are some places where you can start looking.
Often the key information required includes names and dates, and it is a good idea to have more than one resource to draw upon.
Librarians, museum staff and volunteers are gold. I don’t know how many times I have been stuck in front of a metaphoric brick wall and they have said, “Do you know about this door?”
Although humans are the best resource, digital resources help too.
Google is often the first stop. Don’t give up after a fruitless first search. Adding search terms or changing your word order sometimes help change results. Scroll through a few pages of results. Sometimes another search engine can give a different perspective.
Book searches within Google are also useful.
Keep notes, bookmark pages and take screenshots or cell phone snaps.
The California Digital Newspaper Collection features indexed Telegram-Tribune and Tribune issues from 1869 to 1925.
The Library of Congress’s Chronicling America website offers a searchable archive of newspapers from throughout the United States.
Indexing of the post-1925 Tribune is being done by Newspapers.com but that is not currently online. This will be a subscription service.
Historian Dan Krieger has written history columns for the Tribune for decades. The most recent can be found online at Sanluisobispo.com.
The late Wilmar Tognazzini compiled items for his column 100 Years Ago from Tribune issues published beteen 1888 and 1903 that are now online.
Cal Poly Kennedy Library and Special Collections have microfilm of Telegram-Tribune issues published after the 1920s, as well as a collection of Julia Morgan papers and a complete online archive of Cal Poly student newspapers. Their website includes a detailed Cal Poly timeline.
The San Luis Obispo City-County Library has unindexed microfilm of The Tribune, Telegram-Tribune and several other county newspapers. The Tribune is archived from 1869 to the present.
The library also has special collections, including high school yearbooks, available for in-person viewing upon request.
And don’t forget your local history museum.
Museums are making the transition from serving as collections of dusty old stuff to accessible local information hubs telling the story of their community. Consider donating to them.
The El Paso de Robles Area Historical Society is digitizing newspapers from the North County.
The History Center of San Luis Obispo County has downloadable digital walking tours and is in the process of scanning and indexing more than 6,000 glass plate negative portraits.
There have been a number of books authored in the last decade about specific towns or subject areas, including a series published by Arcadia Publishing. Local authors include Jim Gregory and Guy Crabb.
Local bookstores and museums are a good place to shop for those books.
Encyclopedic histories by Myron Angel, Annie Morrison and Benjamin Brooks are available online since they have fallen out of copyright.
The San Luis Obispo Genealogical Society has a web page with an extensive list of county resources and classes for researchers.
Find a Grave has millions of cemetery records and volunteers contribute the background information for some.
The National Genealogical Society has 18 free websites to search. For those who fall deep into the search, there are subscription-based websites such as Ancestory.com.
Social media groups have formed around specific subjects or geography. Some commenters like writing better than researching, so take such groups as a jumping off-point to further research.
This advice goes for authors as well. Often historians, books and newspapers are reflections of the era’s popular wisdom. It is hard to compare eras but keep in mind that attitudes and even the meaning of words can change over time.
I’ll be curious to see where readers find information.
This story was originally published July 18, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
