Facebook brings historical collection to life

RENO, Nev. -- The descriptions of Leola Lewis' and Joe McDonald's lives, loves, friends and neighbors have gone viral on Facebook and Twitter.

But the University of Nevada students wrote them in 1913.

"The primping activity in Manzanita Hall is something to see! We don't often get a chance to visit the boys' rooms in Lincoln Hall. What an occasion!" Lewis wrote.

Their posts — drawn from their papers at the University of Nevada, Reno — are the result of a project started to draw attention to the university's Special Collections Library, which at one point was in jeopardy of being closed during the school's fiscal crisis in 2010.

"It was a wake-up call for us," said Donnelyn Curtis, the head administrator at the library. "I know that we were important to people studying the history of this area."

Curtis found a way to show that the library's collection had a treasure trove of vital local history that could be relevant today.

"I had to find ways to make this history, university history, something that young people were … interested in," she said. "When you think about where those people are, well, they're on Facebook."

Various news outlets, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, have been writing about the pages. Mashable, a blog that covers social media; Yahoo; Time Online; and the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom all featured the story.

Lewis and McDonald had more than 3,000 friend requests — many of them from teachers and librarians — before Facebook took down the page because Leola and Joe did not officially start the page themselves, in violation of Facebook's terms of agreement.

"Even though they were real, it violated the letter of the agreement," Curtis said. Someone from Facebook suggested setting up pages that friends like rather than accounts.

Excerpts from the special collection are used to answer questions from fans of the site, she said.

McDonald studied mechanical engineering. He sold newspapers as a boy in Tonopah, Nev.

His mother saved money and sent him to college, but he had to work. He worked in the dining hall and for the Sagebrush student newspaper as a business manager. He also rang class bells on campus.

Upon graduation, he was eventually offered a job at the Nevada State Journal, one of the ancestors of the Reno Gazette-Journal. He rose to become publisher.

Leola Lewis was a senior class president when McDonald was a sophomore. They were married the year after McDonald graduated. She edited the Journal's society page for about 30 years.

Her manuscript "10,000 Weddings" is part of the Special Collections and might be published as an online serial.

"She was a great writer," Curtis said.