Earlier this month, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced an additional $4.5 million in funding to institutions in 18 states to expand selection and digitization of U.S. historic newspapers for the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), including first-time awardee University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Seventeen other participating institutions - Alaska Division of Libraries, Archives, and Museums; University of California, Riverside; Colorado Historical Society; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; State Historical Society of Iowa; Maine State Library; University of Maryland, College Park; Central Michigan University; Montana Historical Society; University of Nebraska-Lincoln; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Rutgers University, New Brunswick (New Jersey); University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Ohio History Connection; South Dakota Department of Education; University of North Texas; and Washington State Library - received additional awards, each charged with selecting and digitizing approx. 100,000 newspaper pages from their state for contribution to the online newspaper collection "Chronicling America," hosted by the Library of Congress. Since 2005, cultural institutions in 46 states and Puerto Rico have contributed more than 13 million digitized American historical newspaper pages, published between 1789 and 1963 and in 14 different languages, to the collection.
Jointly sponsored by the NEH and LC, NDNP is a long-term effort to provide access to an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. This rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. The NEH grant program funds the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.... Read more about it & follow us on Twitter @librarycongress #ChronAm!!