Ever wondered what Skyline College students were interested in when our college first opened in September 1969? Now you can look it up in seconds.
In a joint effort between the Skyline College Library and the Journalism program, the college’s complete run of student newspapers—The Skyline Press (1969–1985) and The Skyline View (1997–present)—has been digitized and made searchable. The project puts decades of student reporting, commentary, photography, and local ads right at your fingertips.
Now anyone can:
- Search across decades with advanced search tools
- Browse issues just like the originals, complete with a table of contents for each edition
- Copy, clip, and download article transcripts as well as articles and images in high quality
This three-year scanning and processing effort—paused twice, first by COVID-19 and more recently by state budget cuts affecting the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC)—was completed in partnership with UC Riverside and Backstage Library Works.
Where To Find It
- Primary access: the CDNC website hosts the full, searchable archive (The Safari browser works best)
- Built-in backup: because CDNC funding remains uncertain and the site can occasionally glitch, PDFs for most editions are also linked through the Skyline College Library catalog. (Special thanks to Library Support Specialist Cody Baker for his meticulous work uploading decades of files).
Why It Matters
Student newspapers amplify campus voices and serve as living history. Faculty can tap the collection to teach a range of topics, for example, local history, politics and social movements, as well as research methods; staff can quickly surface program milestones, past events, and more. For sample course assignments that incorporate the newspaper archives, contact journalism faculty member Nancy Kaplan-Biegel at Kaplann@smccd.edu.
This project was supported by a PIF award to advance student equity. To learn more about the effort, see the recent companion piece, “Digitizing student newspapers: amplifying student voices during times of change.”
Article by Jessica Silver-Sharp, Librarian
