Friends in research, let me show you why I’m so happy at this moment!

I was told by a librarian this didn’t exist. A lot of times these things just get misfiled. Or mislabeled.

You see, I was told the Panama City Pilot for 1912 didn’t exist on microfilm. According to my contacts at the archive, it was unclear if it even existed in bound form. The PCP is an important publication in my research; Panama City is where Emmett Wilson spent his vacations.

This reel was hiding at the bottom of the stack of microfilm that I’m reading. This was a very nice surprise.

This downside, though, is that I was three-quarters of the way through reading the 1912 issues of the Pensacola Evening News. I may be unable to see them, period.  Colleagues at the University of West Florida (the key repository for historic Pensacola newspapers) say further editions of the PEN past September 1912 do not exist on microfilm or bound copy.

Like a good History Detective, I then contacted the Pensacola News-Journal  (the successor of the PEN) to see if they had an archive. My contact there said whatever archival copy was available would be at the University of West Florida. Dead end?

Maybe not. A find like the heretofore nonexistent Panama City Pilot in my film stack gives me a ray of hope that I’ll find additional issues of the PEN.

I’ll just have to look in the archive myself…and who knows what surprise I’ll turn up!

Categories: Research Status

jsmith532

Professor,
Communication, Arts, and the Humanities
The University of Maryland Global Campus