If you follow this blog, or use the resources linked on this blog, you may be wondering why there has not been much blog activity in the past few months.  Although the blog has been relatively silent, we’ve been busy behind the scenes working on content.  Here are a few things to look forward to by the end of 2014.

The last two of our batches from the 2011-13 grant were accepted by the Library of Congress (LC) today.  Once they’ve been ingested into Chronicling America, and once LC has received the duplicate master microfilm, then all the deliverables for the grant can be checked off. Once that’s done, we can move forward with submitting new data funded by the 2013-15 NDNP NEH grant.  Currently I have around 40,000 processed, digital newspaper pages sitting on my desk that are ready to submit once LC gives the okay.  The titles and dates selected for the new grant are the South Bend News-Times (1913-22), the Evansville Journal (1843-70), the Vincennes Western Sun & General Advertiser  (1835-49), and continuing from the previous grant, more issues of the Indianapolis Journal (1888-93).

We also hope to migrate some of the Indiana Memory newspapers collections that are currently displayed in CONTENTdm into our Veridian software at newspapers.library.in.gov over the next few months.  First up is the Evansville Argus.

We also have new software that will allow us to process some titles in house.  Titles that we’ll process in house are some which were previously scanned but not OCRed.  The best example being a collection of Vevay, Indiana newspapers that Switzerland County High School scanned and posted on their old school website.  We plan to OCR these scans and ingest them into Veridian which will make them keyword searchable.

Stay tuned…

Does your local library, historical society, or genealogy club want to digitize your Indiana community’s newspapers?  Does the prospect seem overwhelming?  Or perhaps you just don’t know where to start.

If so, have no worries!  The Indiana State Library staff would be happy to talk to you individually or present a public program about newspaper digitization best practices, and how the State Library could help.

If interested contact Chandler or Connie.  Their contact info can be found at http://www.in.gov/library/ldo.htm .

My colleague, Connie, and I recently visited the Northwest Indiana Times in Munster (formerly Lake County Times, and Hammond Times) to discuss our newspaper digitization efforts, and to answer some of their questions about digitizing their newspaper.  You can read about our visit here: Indiana working to digitize historic newspapers : Munster Community News.

The Library of Congress recently ingested another 12,533 pages of Indiana newspapers into Chronicling America!  This brings the total number of Indiana newspaper pages in ChronAm to over 80,000!  The Indiana State Library staff are digitizing these newspapers as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program.

Among the titles and dates recently added:

• The Indianapolis Journal (1 September 1902 – 8 June 1904)
• Indiana State Sentinel (2 January 1845 – 30 December 1852)
• Weekly Indiana State Sentinel (10 February 1855 – 25 December 1856)
• Indiana State Sentinel (January 1861 – 30 May 1864)
• The Indiana State Sentinel (6 January 1874 – 29 December 1874, 7 January 1880 – 29 June 1881, 7 January 1891 – 24 June 1891)

The Library of Congress recently updated Chronicling America, and the following new Indiana newspaper content is now available:
Brookville American, 1858-1860; Indiana American, 1853-1857; Indiana State Sentinel (weekly edition), 1875-78, 82-89, 92-94; and more issues of the Wabash Express, 1860-1861.

If you are a regular user of Indiana newspapers on Chronicling America, you may notice that several Plymouth newspapers have disappeared from the site.  Those newspapers have been temporarily purged, but they should be restored within a week.

These additions will bring the total number of Indiana newspaper pages on Chronicling America to over 70,000.  Happy searching!

Last week a co-worker and I attended the National Digital Newspaper Project Awardee Conference in DC. One of our fellow NDNP awardees from Arizona wrote about her experiences at the conference.

The following is a news release from the Library of Congress about new grant awards for the upcoming two years, including more Indiana newspapers!  Historic newspapers slated to be added in the coming two years include more issues of the Indianapolis Journal and the Indiana Tribüne, that we were unable to incorporate during the first grant.  In addition, the Western Sun, published in Vincennes, Indiana, will be included in the project.  The Sun has a long history in Indiana; it has been in continuous publication, despite turnovers in ownership and name changes, since it was started on July 4, 1807.

NEH Announces $3.5 Million for 2013 NDNP Awards, including Participation by 4 New States and Territories

July 29, 2013

Recently the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced 14 awards totaling $3.5 million to institutions representing their states or territories in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Three projects – sponsored by the Connecticut State Library; the Idaho State Historical Society; and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History – are new to the program this year. The University of Florida returns to NDNP, partnered with a new NDNP participant, the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, to digitize newspapers from both locations. Ten other institutions – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Indiana State Library; Kansas State Historical Society; Louisiana State University Libraries; Montana Historical Society; State Historical Society of North Dakota; Oklahoma Historical Society; University of Oregon Libraries; University of South Carolina; and West Virginia University Research Corporation – have received continuing awards to contribute additional content to the program.

This funding will support the selection and digitization of historic American newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 by each participating state, according to NDNP technical guidelines. The Library of Congress (LC) will make these newspapers freely available through the Chronicling America Website (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/) beginning in mid-2014. In all, 37 states and territories have participated in the program.

NDNP, a partnership between the NEH and the LC, is a long-term effort to provide an Internet-based, searchable database of all U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. The NEH grant program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories…. Read more about it!