Aragon Outlook digitizes its archives

“Having a searchable and digital archive allows you to search up any online article with any topic, so that’s one big thing. Another thing is for preservation. Because paper degrades over time, newspapers are not meant to last. If there were to be fire or a flood, we would lose all that history,” Herrera said.

Grace Xia, co-editor-in-chief of The Aragon Outlook for the 2021-22 school year, believes this feature allows users to learn more about the Aragon community. This feature enables users to learn about Aragon’s current and past people.

“You can learn so much about other people, whether teachers or other members of the San Mateo Union High School District. If you search up a certain teacher or someone you want to know better, you will find many past articles about them when they first came into the school, which is interesting,” Xia said.

Xia isn’t the only one. According to Elizabeth van Blommestein, co-editor-in-chief for The Aragon Outlook for the 2021-22 school year, teachers at Aragon are also using this as a resource to enhance their curriculum.

“William Colglazier, an AP U.S. history teacher at Aragon, used a paper about Title IX for a lesson. I also know a couple of history teachers who are excited about diving into and using that archives website as a part of their curriculum,” van Blommestein said.

A pivotal goal that Herrera wanted to achieve through the archives was the ability for users to learn from the experience of people alike.

“When we talk about history, and we talk about student activism, for example, it brings it home if you can see what students at your school did say, during the Vietnam War, for example. It makes history much more tangible when you know what’s going on in your hometown and what people your age were doing in the past,” Herrera said.

Xia and van Blommestein also mention how the archives have allowed them the ability to witness the evolution of the newspaper. From the change in the writing style to the coloring of the paper, the digitized archives have allowed The Aragon Outlook’s staff to see the progression from where they began.

“Looking at the first page of the first paper ever published at Aragon and comparing it to the last first page that we first published is incredible. Some things were relatively the same, like where we put captions and how photos are laid out with people looking into the page. Some things were also different, such as the lede,” van Blommestein said.

The Aragon Outlook plans to maintain the archives and continue adding to them. Vedant Gaur, the current technology editor, is planning to implement some new components as well.

“We’re planning on maintaining the archive in that we’re going to start scanning in new pages, new issues, because I think as of now it only goes up to the ’80s, which is nice, right? You have a few decades worth of articles already in the archive, but possibly continuing that by doing a few more issues for a few more years. I might look into making a mobile app version of it. Just so it’s more accessible,” Gaur said.

Herrera believes that the archives are highly beneficial to the community and is willing to help any publications interested in pursuing an archival process.

“If other schools in the district are looking to do an archival process of their own, I’d be more than happy to speak with them about what that would entail,” Herrera said.

The digitized archives can be found at https://archives.aragonoutlook.org.

Amber Chia is a senior at Carlmont High School in Belmont. Student News appears in the weekend edition. You can email Student News at news@smdailyjournal.com.