National Digital Newspaper Program

The New York Public Library is one of six institutions nationwide to be awarded a grant to participate in the first phase of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a new 20-year initiative to develop an online, searchable database of historically significant newspapers. A joint initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, the NDNP is also an outgrowth of the U.S. Newspaper Program, a coordinated effort by states to inventory and microfilm newspapers. In the pilot phase, the NDNP will address the challenges of and develop standards for digitizing historical newspaper content from microfilm, and create an archive of 700,000 or more digitized newspaper pages.

The New York Public Library's large and frequently unique New York State newspaper holdings constitute a wealth of data and opinion for the general researcher and the historian. Over the next two years, the Library will scan 100,000 pages of New York State newspapers from microfilm and enable the text to be searched. In addition, the other grantees-University of California, Riverside; University of Florida Libraries, Gainesville; University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington; University of Utah, Salt Lake City; and Library of Virginia, Richmond-and the Library of Congress will each contribute 100,000 pages from their newspaper holdings. The digitized newspapers will be integrated and made searchable on the Library of Congress website.

The first phase of the National Digital Newspaper Program will focus on editions published between 1900 and 1910. Ultimately, editions published between 1836 and 1922 will be represented in the digital archive.

National Digital Newspaper Program

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