Senior Hunter Temple sorting through news sources. Photo courtesy of English teacher Scott Nairne.
News at San Luis Obispo High has been reported for decades, covering everything from sports to political issues to what everyone had for breakfast. Now, students can view issues as far back as from 1958. These editions were all paper of course, each being a couple pages in length. The pages have since yellowed and adopted that comforting old book smell, but the contents are surprisingly still relevant.
So, how can we preserve these timeless relics of SLOHS’s past? Senior Hunter Temple has taken it upon themselves to digitize all of the past paper editions.
“I think it’s really cool to look back and see the kind of stuff that people were talking about then and how it compares to what people are talking about now,” said Temple.
This project is quite the undertaking, especially with the volume of material Temple is working with.
“I’m hoping to at least get the stuff we got from like the seventies and eighties before I graduate,” said Temple.
Temple’s digitizations are a lengthy process, and it’s likely to take up a significant amount his time in the class.
“The people that read the stuff are usually people that went to the school, in some cases, like forty years ago, that want to look at what their school was like back then,” said Expressions advisor Scott Nairne.
In the near future, website shortcuts to different issues and names will be added to the Expressions website. This will take readers directly to older formats, such as Tiger’s Roar and The Ambush.
Some of the topics spoken about are still very relevant today, such as the 1959 Tigers Roar edition talking about bringing more mature books into the library of English classrooms. This information is very valuable, and for anyone interested in history and the history of this campus, it is a blast from the past in the best way possible.
