> My archivist daughter at the National Library of Medicine has passed
> along information about yesterday's release of a new searchable
> historic newspaper collection. Some lessons could have been learned
> from Proquest, which has sharper images and which prints newspaper
> name, date, and page number on the page with the printed article.
> Nonetheless, after experimenting with the search features for only a
> half hour, I can attest to the research benefits of this new resource,
> which offershistoric newspaperspreviously unavailable online.
>
> Read the website release announcement below for the current scope and
> long-term plans.
>
> Sue Attalla
>
> LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
> 101 Independence Avenue SE
> Washington DC 20540
> Phone: (202) 707-2905
> Fax: (202) 707-9199
> Email: p...@loc.gov
>
> March 21, 2007
> Contact: Guy Lamolinara, Library of Congress (202) 707-9217;
> g...@loc.gov Elissa Pruett, National Endowment for the Humanities
> (202)
> 606-8671
>
> AMERICANS CAN READ THE NEWS BEFORE IT WAS HISTORY ON NEW WEB SITE
> "Chronicling America" OffersHistoric Newspapersfrom Six States and
> D.C. in First Release
>
> The Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
> today announced that "Chronicling America: Historic American
> Newspapers"
> is debuting with more than 226,000 pages of public-domain newspapers
> from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia and the
> District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910. The
> fully-searchable site is available atwww.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/.
>
> "Chronicling America" is produced by the National Digital Newspaper
> Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the
> Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress created to develop an
> Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with select
> digitization of historic pages as well as information about newspapers
> from 1690 to the present. Supported by NEH's "We the People" program
> and
> Digital Humanities Initiative, this rich digital resource will
> continue
> to be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of
> Congress.
>
> Over a period of approximately 20 years, NDNP will create a national,
> digital resource of historically significant newspapers published
> between 1836 and 1922 from all U.S. states and territories. Also on
> the
> Web site, an accompanying national newspaper directory of
> bibliographic
> and holdings information directs users to newspaper titles in all
> formats. The information in the directory was created through an
> earlier
> NEH initiative. The Library of Congress will also digitize and
> contribute to the NDNP database a significant number of newspaper
> pages
> drawn from its own collections during the course of this partnership.
> For the initial launch the Library of Congress contributed more than
> 90,000 pages from 14 different newspaper titles published in the
> District of Columbia between 1900 and 1910.
>
> "The Library congratulates all the partners in this extraordinary
> program to makehistoric newspapersavailable through our Web site,"
> said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "The National Digital
> Newspaper Program provides access to one of our best sources of
> information about what was considered important to Americans at a
> given
> point in time."
>
> "'Chronicling America' will allow students, teachers, historians -- in
> fact, all Americans -- access to some of our most important historical
> documents. It is one thing to read about historical events from the
> perspective of historians, narrated with the value of hindsight. It is
> entirely different to read the story as it was happening," said NEH
> Chairman Bruce Cole. "'Chronicling America' will be available to the
> American public for free, forever; and I hope Americans will visit the
> site and try to imagine the emotions and actions of their forebears as
> those stories went to print."
>
> The following six institutions received the first NDNP grants to
> digitize papers in their respective states from the first decade of
> the
> 20th century:
>
> * University of California, Riverside, $400,000;
> * University of Florida Libraries, Gainesville, $320, 959;
> * University of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington, $310,000;
> * New York Public Library, New York City, $351,500;
> * University of Utah, Salt Lake City, $352,693; and
> * Library of Virginia, Richmond, $201,226.
>
> New NDNP awardees will be announced later this summer.
>
> The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. Its more
> than 134 million items -- books, newspapers, periodicals, manuscripts,
> maps, photographs, films, sound recordings and digital materials - are
> accessible through its 21 reading rooms on Capitol Hill. The Library's
> newspaper collections have grown to comprise more than 1 million
> current
> issues, more than 30,000 bound historical volumes and more than
> 600,000
> microfilm reels.
>
> Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National
> Endowment
> for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature,
> philosophy
> and other areas of the humanities. NEH grants enrich classroom
> learning,
> create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas to life through public
> television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions, and programs
> in
> libraries and other community places.