Going Way Back With the Barometer

November 1, 2023

New resource puts the past at your fingertips

By Scholle McFarland

In the days before students could peruse online event calendars or check friends’ Instagram and TikTok feeds, when you wanted to know what was happening at Oregon State University, your premier source was the Daily Barometer.

Now, you can search the more than 14,000 issues of the student newspaper published between its first edition in March 1896 and the present day. The new digital archive is an easy-to-use resource of uncommon power. Because the entire collection is keyword searchable, you can efficiently seek out answers to questions that, in years past, would have required a trip to the Special Collections and Archives Research Center reading room and hours of thumbing through paper archives or microfilm reels. Trying to remember the name of your old favorite bar? Narrow the search by year

and plug in a distinctive term or phrase, like “dimers.” Want to read about a key event from your days at school or

find the personal ad that lead to your life-long romance? Try the same technique. You can take a look for yourself at beav.es/baro.