Unboxing VI: Cataloging the Newspaper Collection

The summer of 2026 went well, in terms of productivity, settlements, and short but beautiful vacations. I am redesigning my office on campus, including a few Billy bookshelves from IKEA. This gave me space to unload more boxes from my father’s storage.

One of my personal activities in recent weeks is cataloging the newspapers I have been collecting since 2003. While Ertan and Ebru forced me to take short road trips in Texas during our doctoral studies, I found a new hobby that motivated me to go. Yes, in those years, I was not keen on traveling at all. Since I liked newspapers a lot, I thought, why not collect newspapers as souvenirs?

I sometimes think collecting magnets would be easier to store, but I don’t regret collecting newspapers instead. Gradually, my friends also brought me newspapers as gifts- I wish I have recorded this! please write to me if you have given me any newspapers as gifts- I can remember only a few of them. For instance, I have no idea where the Iranian dailies come from as I haven’t been to Iran yet- Recently I began to use Türkiye’s biggest online second-hand book portal, Nadirkitap, to get older printed dailies. So the collection got even bigger. In the meantime, I am aware that finding printed dailies is getting harder as digitalization brutalizes printing processes. This is a tribute to a disappearing media type.

After my Lesvos trip, where I sort of accidentally found three local dailies, I thought, why not use AI to start cataloging? Among the big three, ChatGPT did the work! Here is how I catalog: I take a photo, upload it to a project I started, and then ChatGPT extracts data and enters it into a Google Drive Sheet. Gemini and Claude create a new document every time; only ChatGPT can edit an existing sheet and add a new entry every time I upload a picture.

Here is a video of a small exhibition of newspapers back in the Library’s Week on our campus:

Here you can follow the ongoing cataloging process here

739 newspapers and counting!

These will change, but for the moment, here are some stats:

1. Oldest Physical Newspaper Issue (by Publication Date)

The oldest newspaper issue in the catalog is La République, dated April 15, 1932.

• Collection ID: NEW-0032
• Title: La République (French-language edition of Cumhuriyet)
• Publication Date: 1932-04-15 (7th Year, Issue No. 2471)
• Country / City: Istanbul, Turkey
• Language: French
• Publisher: Yunus Nadi (Owner & Editor-in-Chief); Abdine Daver (Editorial Director)
• Front-Page Headline / Main Story: “After Hindenburg’s election, a harsh blow is dealt to the Nazis; decree dissolves Hitler’s SA and related organizations.”

Next 4 Oldest Issues in the Collection:

1. NEW-0494: Ulus — November 29, 1934 (Ankara, Turkey)
2. NEW-0261: Açık Söz — June 30, 1937 (Istanbul, Turkey)
3. NEW-0266: Akşam Haberleri — November 28, 1941 (Istanbul, Turkey)
4. NEW-0451: Vakit — September 17, 1943 (Ankara, Turkey)

2. Oldest Newspaper Titles (by Original Founding Date / History)

If you are looking for the newspaper title with the earliest historical establishment date noted in its masthead/history:

1. NEW-0015: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger — Founded in 1802 (Kölnische Zeitung, Germany) — Catalog Issue Date: June 25, 2015
2. NEW-0301: Cambridge Chronicle & TAB — Founded in 1846 (Cambridge, MA, USA) — Catalog Issue Date: February 14, 2019
3. NEW-0506: Cape Argus — Founded in 1857 (Cape Town, South Africa) — Catalog Issue Date: January 28, 2020
4. NEW-0564: L’Arena — Founded in 1866 (Il giornale di Verona, Italy) — Catalog Issue Date: July 24, 2016
5. NEW-0302: Somerville Journal — Founded in 1870 (Somerville, MA, USA) — Catalog Issue Date: March 14, 2019

Based on my newspaper collection catalogue [so far] (727 total newspaper entries across the dataset), here is the breakdown of the countries and cities represented:

1. Country Count

• Standardized Total: 42 unique countries

  (Note: In the raw table, there are 45 distinct entries due to name variants such as Türkiye/Turkey, United States/USA, and Portugal/Portekiz).

Top 5 Countries by Newspaper Count

1. Türkiye – 296 newspapers
2. United States – 164 newspapers
3. United Kingdom – 28 newspapers
4. Greece – 22 newspapers
5. Iran – 20 newspapers

Full List of Standardized Countries (42)

Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, Northern Cyprus, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States.

2. City / Place of Publication Count

Of the 727 items, 675 records specify a publication location (52 records are unspecified or missing city details).

• Raw Location Entries: 248 unique text entries as written in the sheet.
• Standardized Publication Locations: 218 unique locations (after merging sub-districts like Galata/Kadıköy/Şişli into İstanbul, consolidating spelling variations like Istanbul/İstanbul, Washington/Washington, D.C., and mapping domain URLs).
• Distinct Named Cities: 198 specific cities (excluding 20 broader state/regional or generic entries such as California, Texas, Bavaria, or “National”).

Top 5 Cities/Places by Newspaper Count

1. İstanbul – 85 newspapers
2. London – 21 newspapers
3. Tehran – 19 newspapers
4. Washington, D.C. – 13 newspapers
5. New York City – 13 newspapers (tied with Adana and Casablanca)

There are 30 distinct languages represented in the collection (or 39 unique string variations if counting raw, uncleaned text entries directly from the table).

Top 5 Most Frequent Languages

1. Turkish: 298 items
2. English: 206 items
3. Arabic: 27 items
4. German: 25 items
5. Greek: 22 items

Complete List of All 30 Distinct Languages

• French: 19 items
• Persian: 17 items
• Dutch: 13 items
• Italian: 11 items
• Romanian: 11 items
• Russian: 10 items
• Finnish: 9 items
• Polish: 8 items
• Czech: 7 items
• Spanish: 7 items
• Lithuanian: 6 items
• Norwegian: 6 items
• Armenian: 5 items
• Montenegrin: 4 items
• Japanese: 3 items
• Portuguese: 3 items
• Bosnian: 2 items
• Croatian: 2 items
• Korean: 2 items
• Serbian: 2 items
• Swedish: 2 items
• Ukrainian: 2 items
• Afrikaans: 1 item
• Kurdish (Sorani): 1 item
• Malayalam: 1 item