Filling in the Back Issues

I recently helped my university, St. Bonaventure, acquire a huge collection of back issues of Civil War News. “We have a strong interest in public history in Bonaventure’s history program, and Civil War News is an excellent example of that in action,” says Dennis Frank, the university’s archivist.

In cataloguing the back issues, Dennis discovered there are a few holes in the collection. We’re looking for a little help in filling in the blanks. Hopefully, that’s where some of ECW’s readers might come in!

For me, the acquisition of this collection was cool because I teach writing in the university’s journalism program; Civil War News pretty much embodies my professional interests of journalism and Civil War history. It’s also cool to see the university’s Civil War holdings continue to expand.

The core of the university’s collection is Mark Dunkelman’s and Mike Winey’s material for the 154th NY. “As a result of their donation, we’ve begun attracting more material relating to the American Civil War as it affected our part of southwestern New York State and northwestern Pennsylvania,” Dennis says, offering a link to the archive’s Civil War web site so people can get an idea of what the university is putting together. For instance, the famed Bucktails came from the Pennsylvania counties just to the immediate south across the state line.

The Civil War News collection makes St. Bonaventure one of the few libraries to have a substantial back run. “The more complete we can make it the better we can serve the Civil War community at large, as well as our students’ needs,” Dennis says. “We’ll be happy to add anything that fills in the holes during this period and before.”

Here’s the list of missing issues of Civil War News:

1991, 17: 1-3, 5-11
1992, 18: 1-11
1993, 19: 1-3, 5-9, 11
1994, 20: 3, 7, 10-11
1995, 21: none
1996, 22: none
1997, 23: 5
1998, 24: 2,10
1999, 25: 6, 11
2000, 26: none
2001, 27: 1, 10
2002, 28: none
2003, 28 [sic]:  9
2004, 29: 7
2005, 30: none
2006, 31: none
2007, 32: 6
2008, 33: 9
2009, 35: none
2010, 36: none
2011, 37: none
2012, 38: none
2013, 39: 9
2014, 40: none
2015, 41: none
2016, 42: 6, 11
2017, 43: 2-11
2018, 44: 1-11
2019, 1-3, 8, 10

If you have any back issues you might be willing to donate, or if you have any questions, you can email Dennis at dfrank@sbu.edu or mail them to:

Dennis Frank
University Archivist
St. Bonaventure University
3521 West State Rd.
St. Bonaventure, NY 14778

Civil War News is the monthly current events newspaper of the Civil War community, although it also includes a lot of articles and features about Civil War-related topics. Earlier this year, ECW ran a blog series highlighting a number of the paper’s columnists. ECW’s monthly newsletter appears in the paper each month, too.