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Amateur Newspaper Collection Amateur newspapers are those published by non-professionals, often young people, with interests in printing, publishing and/or journalism. Though they continue to appear to this day, the great period of their prominence was the last quarter century of the nineteenth century.
The Collection Cary's collection of amateur newspapers came in four separate acquisitions. Each issue is represented by a code letter signifying its provenance in the last column of the database. The collection formed by R. W. Burnett of Cuba, NY, who published an amateur newspaper in the late 1870s, (B) was acquired by Cary before 1979. In the early 1990s, two other collections were acquired, one from the Abacus Bookshop in Rochester (A) and the other from Debra Williams of Rochester (W). Lastly, a very few titles were transferred from the departmental vertical file (V) and added to the collection.
The Database If an editor of the newspaper was given, he or she was listed. If two editors were given, both were listed. If three were given, only the first was listed along with the term "et al." If no editor was given, but a publisher was, he was noted along with the term "pub.". A very few titles in this list are technically probably not amateur newspapers, but as they came with the collection, they were entered into the database. Duplicate issues were retained. That is why there are sometimes identical entries in the database. A few amateur booklets, and a small amount of paper ephemera, came with the collections This material has been foldered at the end of the collection (in box 5) and is listed here. Because of the challenges of the computer program, an issue that has a number such as volume 2, numbers 3 and 4, is listed as volume 2, number 3.4. And an issue that spans two months, such as July and August is listed as 7.8. (In other words, the program could not deal with the word "and" or the "&" symbol.) For titles beginning with "The", the "The" was entered after the title, thus "The Observer" has been entered as "Observer, The". However, the computer has understood it such that it has filed it after a title such as, "Observer and Critic." In the geographical listing, the two Canadian provinces, Nova Scotia and Ontario, were inter-alphabetized with those for the states.
Related Topics The National Amateur Press Association, founded in 1876 as the first group in the world for those interested in amateur newspapers and the various aspects of their publication and production, continues to this day. It has an annual convention, a quarterly journal, and an exchange program. Its website contains historical information relating to the history of amateur journalism. The American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA has a collection of about 50,000 issues of amateur newspapers representing over 5,500 titles. Their website has a descriptive essay on the collection as well as an informative history of the genre. They have begun to mount the geographical inventory for their collection on their website. The Amateur Newspaper Collection was organized, and this finding aid was prepared by Karl Kabelac.
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