National Digital Newspaper Program

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NEH is soliciting proposals from institutions to participate in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Ultimately, over a period of approximately 20 years, NDNP will create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all the states and U.S. territories published between 1836 and 1922. This searchable database will be permanently maintained at the Library of Congress (LC) and be freely accessible via the Internet. [See the beta prototype Web site, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers at http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/.] An accompanying national newspaper directory of bibliographic and holdings information on the Web site will direct users to newspaper titles available in all types of formats. LC 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 between NEH and the Library. The NDNP will be implemented in several phases. The Endowment intends to support projects in all states and U.S. territories provided that sufficient funds allocated for this purpose are available. One organization within each U.S. state or territory will receive an award to collaborate with relevant state partners in this efofrt. Previously funded projects will be eligible for continued support to digitize pages from new decades, as the program increases its chronological span. During this phase of NDNP, successful applicants will select newspapers—published in their state in English between 1860 and 1922—and convert, primarily from microfilm, over a period of two years, approximately 100,000 pages into digital files, according to the technical guidelines (66-page PDF) outlined by the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/pdf/NDNP_200811TechNotes.pdf

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