National Digital Newspaper Program
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The National Digital Newspaper Program is a joint project between the
National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
and the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
to create and maintain a publicly available, online digital archive of historically significant newspapers published in the United States between 1836 and 1922. Additionally, the program will make available bibliographic records and holdings information for some 140,000 newspaper titles from the 17th century to the present. Further, it will include scope notes and encyclopedia-style entries discussing the historical significance of specific newspapers. Added content will also include contextually relevant historical information. "One organization within each U.S. state or territory will receive an award to collaborate with relevant state partners in this effort." In March 2007 more than 226,000 pages of newspapers from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910 were put online at a fully searchable site called "
Chronicling America ''Chronicling America'' is an open access, open source newspaper database and companion website. It is produced by the United States National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowme ...
.

As of December 2007, the total number of pages is about 413,000. This further expanded to be 1 million pages in 2009. Funding through the
National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
is carried out through their "We The People" initiative.


Purpose

This project dovetails with the United States Newspaper Program which was a massive project to microfilm newspaper collections. The initiators of that earlier project asserted that the intellectual content of newspapers serves an important role for researchers as it is for all intents and purposes the first draft of history. Newspapers also provide unique access to "diverse geographic viewpoints at the community level." Problematically, since the middle of the 19th century this "first draft" has been recorded on poor quality
newsprint Newsprint is a low-cost, non-archival paper consisting mainly of wood pulp and most commonly used to print newspapers and other publications and advertising material. Invented in 1844 by Charles Fenerty of Nova Scotia, Canada, it usually has an ...
which is decaying rapidly. This digitization project's purpose is to continue preserving newspaper and newspaper collections while addressing the inadequacies of the prior program. Through digitization, it is more likely that images will be copied with fidelity and that the records will be more richly searchable. This latter point is huge as newspapers traditionally posed a research challenge due to density of text and inadequate cataloging of content.


History

On March 31, 2004, Bruce Cole, the directory of the NEH, and James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, signed an agreement creating the National Digital Newspaper Program. The NDNP follows in the footsteps of the successful United States Newspaper Program, a several-decade effort to catalog and microfilm the bulk of America's historic newspapers. The program is broken down into two phases. Each successive phase will both increase the scope of the program and refine the requirements for data collection.


Phase 1

In July 2004 the award guidelines were issued. Applications were due in October and awardees were announced the following March. The first phase took newspapers from a small subset of the states, limited to 1900 through 1910. After using this phase to improve technical requirements and specifications, the program was opened to other awardees in
Phase 2 Michael Lawrence Marrow (August 2, 1955 – December 12, 2019), known as PHASE 2 and Lonny Wood, was an American aerosol paint artist based in New York City. Mostly active in the 1970s, Phase 2 is generally credited with originating the "bubble l ...
. The awardees for Phase 1 are: *
University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...
* University of Florida Libraries, Gainesville *
University of Kentucky Libraries The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state' ...
, Lexington *
New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...
, New York City * University of Utah, Salt Lake Cit

* Library of Virginia, Richmond The General-access Phase 1 website prototype was implemented in March 2007 and that May it was announced that phase 1 was completed.


Phase 2

Phase 2 of NDNP expanded grants to an additional group of institutions. Awards granted in 2007 and 2008 included the following institutions: *
Arizona State Library, Archives and Records Management Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Four ...
*
University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
* Minnesota Historical Society *
University of Nebraska, Lincoln A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
*
University of North Texas The University of North Texas (UNT) is a public research university in Denton, Texas. It was founded as a nonsectarian, coeducational, private teachers college in 1890 and was formally adopted by the state 11 years later."Denton Normal School," ...
*
Ohio Historical Society Ohio History Connection, formerly The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society and Ohio Historical Society, is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1885. Headquartered at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio, Ohio History Connect ...
, Columbus *
Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
*
State Historical Society of Missouri The State Historical Society of Missouri, a private membership and state funded organization, is a comprehensive research facility located in Columbia, Missouri, specializing in the preservation and study of Missouri's cultural heritage. Establ ...
*
Washington State Library The Washington State Library is a government agency that operates public libraries in Washington state's prisons and mental hospitals, and maintains collections related to the state government. Based in Tumwater, it is a service of the Washingto ...


Program Technology

Participants must follow the technical guidelines laid out in a 64-page PDF. The technology for the NDNP digital repository is being built using largely
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
software, including: *
Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...
*
Apache Cocoon Apache Cocoon, usually abbreviated as Cocoon, is a web application framework built around the concepts of Pipeline, separation of concerns, and component-based web development. The framework focuses on XML and XSLT publishing and is built usin ...
*
Gentoo Linux Gentoo Linux (pronounced ) is a Linux distribution built using the Portage package management system. Unlike a binary software distribution, the source code is compiled locally according to the user's preferences and is often optimized for the ...
*
Apache Lucene Apache Lucene is a free and open-source search engine software library, originally written in Java by Doug Cutting. It is supported by the Apache Software Foundation and is released under the Apache Software License. Lucene is widely used as ...
Digital objects are stored in .TIFF 6.0, .JPEG 2000, and .PDF formats. Metadata is provided in the METS/MODS version of XML and XML provides the basis for larger hierarchical structures as well.


Alternatives

The scanning efforts of the government entity have been dwarfed by
newspapers.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. In November 2018, ...
and
newspaperarchive.com Heritage Microfilm, Inc. (est. 1997) is a preservation microfilm and microfilm digitization business located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. History The company began in 1996 when the microfilm division of Cedar Rapids-based Crest Information Technolo ...
which as of March 2018 claim to each have scanned more than 350 million pages. Publishers, libraries and historical organizations find the private sector faster, less complicated and cheaper than the National Digital Newspaper Program. Both private organizations charge readers to read, but do not charge publishers to scan items.


See also

* United States Newspaper Program *
Trove Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text document ...


References


External links


National Endowment for the HumanitiesLibrary of Congress
* ttp://www.lib.utah.edu/digital/unews/ Utah Digital Newspapersbr>Chronicling AmericaFlorida Digital Newspaper LibraryFlorida & Puerto Rico Digital Newspaper ProjectTexas Digital Newspaper CollectionsNewspapercat: a catalog of digitized historical newspapers.
{{authority control Archives in the United States
Newspapers published in the United States A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
Library of Congress National Endowment for the Humanities Joint ventures