SCRAPBOOKS

In 1927, the year of the Dole Race from California to Hawaii, my mother was twelve. She kept a scrapbook about her older sister, Mildred. She pasted news articles about Mildred in it and before she was done, there were over two hundred news articles from newspapers across the country. I have the impression that scrapbooks were more popular back then than today.
The scrapbook was a start to my research into Mildred for the book, Shooting Star. But there were drawbacks. As a twelve-year-old, my mother often posted the front-page story in the scrapbook but neglected to cut out the rest of the article appearing on later pages. In other cases, she cut out the header so the name of the newspaper and/or the date remained unknown. In a couple cases the articles were important and I wanted to include them in the book. I spent many an hour in front of the microfiche machine with old newspapers attempting to find the issue with a particular article in it.
I mentioned above that the news stories were pasted into the book. That means they can’t be taken out. Everything is permanently affixed to the page. It would have been handier if the articles were placed behind plastic covers like we have today. In several cases the articles had become damaged over time since they were not protected.
What takes the place of a scrapbook today? The internet offers plenty of resources for research of history. It is amazing what one can find. For More Than A Man Can Stand, I found a variety of things that would have been impossible to find a few years ago.
One of those was The Aircraft Yearbook for 1919. Someone posted it and there it is for anyone to find. It contains reports from every airplane manufacturer in the United States. I was able to see photos of the planes manufactured in New Jersey and a summary of their production statistics. A few years ago, I would not even know such a resource existed.
One can find stuff on the internet that would otherwise be lost. In the future, not many scrapbooks will turn up as resources for books like Shooting Star. But there will be other sources if one is diligent in searching for them.