Program aims to digitize Nebraska newspapers

LINCOLN, Neb. – The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has received a $271,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to become part of the National Digital Newspaper Program. \nThe program is a joint effort by the endowment and the Library of Congress, which are working with agencies in various states to archive digital versions of historical newspapers. \nTwo years ago, six states were chosen to pilot the program, and now Nebraska is one of three new states to join the endeavor. \nLee Bockhorn, the media representative for the endowment, said though only a few states are currently involved, the goal of the project is to have collections from all 50 states. \nUNL’s grant proposal was chosen in part because of a recommendation from a peer review panel consisting of humanities experts, as well as members of the National Council on the Humanities. The written summary of the panel’s evaluation stated that “panelists noted that Nebraska’s participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program would offer exciting new content to the repository of newspapers.” \n“We’re one of the first to be involved. It’s a real honor for us,” project director Katherine Walter said. “I thought it would be a really wonderful way to build on what we were doing with the Nebraska Newspaper Project.” \nThe Nebraska Newspaper Project has worked to transfer more than 350 million newspaper pages to microfilm. \n“We’ll be doing selection of the microfilm based on technical specifications and on importance of the titles historically,” Walter said. \nMicrofilm will be scanned and digitized by iArchive, a Utah company that has been involved in the work with the program in other states as well. \nThe Daily Nebraskan, the student newspaper at U. Nebraska, is preparing to digitize its archive in conjunction with the endowment effort. \nImages scanned by the company will allow users to search for keywords in any text on a page, including captions, headlines and advertisements, according to the iArchive Web site. \nWalter said the groups are working on a few different facets of the project – the redevelopment of the papers’ histories, selection of which microfilms to use, working with iArchive and working with the staff who will be compiling and cataloging the microfilms and files. \nShe said they will also be doing quality control on all images to make sure they meet Library of Congress specifications. \nThe project will have 100,000 Nebraska newspaper pages digitized and available for the public to view on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America Web site at www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica by June 30, 2009.