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Calhoun County's Hur Herald Online Newspaper Archived at Glenville State
Jason Gum
GLENVILLE, WV - For 25 years, Bob Weaver of Calhoun County has been publishing The Hur Herald. The publication is named after the village of Hur, which is located near Mt. Zion, WV and has a population of around 25 people. While the newspaper has been online in digital form since July of 1999, he began publishing by handing out over a thousand physical copies around the county for the amusement of his neighbors in 1996.
Weaver now has over 2.5 million visitors a year to the website. He officially retired from daily publishing on May 31, 2016 (but then changed his mind) and has decided to hand over the archives related to his journalistic endeavors to Glenville State College.
This comprehensive work includes thousands of news articles and photographs, which the Glenville State Archives will be saving in both digital and physical form with-in the college's Robert F. Kidd Library to provide access to future generations.
Mr. Weaver is a writer, historian, collector, naturalist, and photographer. He has worked in a variety of fields which have included mortuary science, hospital administration, alcohol and drug abuse treatment, and Calhoun County government. In fact, he is credited as the founder of two drug and alcohol treatment centers and served three terms on the Calhoun County Commission.
Weaver is best known for his journalistic integrity and passion to report the news which, many times, has earned him grief from law enforcement and community members.
In fact, he has been arrested on more than one occasion for attempting to provide adequate coverage about happenings in the area. His method focuses around the who, what, when, where, and how of reporting and his desire to provide the reader with the whole story.
Mr. Weaver takes pride in the fact that his coverage has sometimes acted as a catalyst, shining a light on unsavory activity that resulted in corrective action being taken in some form.
Archiving the collection will involve reformatting with a variety of mediums created for organizational and preservation purposes. Currently, the complete digital collection is housed on one server. Many of the original paper-versions between 1996-1999 will also be added to the repository and digitized as the initiative progresses.
The Staff Librarian and Archivist, Jason Gum, is always looking for items related to local history to preserve for future generations at Glenville State's repository. Important archival materials are usually documents, photographs, multi-media recordings, and other types of physical ephemera related to central West Virginia.
For more information on the Glenville State Archives, visit www.glenville.edu or contact the Robert F. Kidd Library at (304) 462-6161. | 
