HSPA and other members of an advisory committee have helped to narrow down titles of historic newspapers to be digitized through a grant.
The Indiana State Library project will culminate in digitizing 100,000 newspaper pages from major Indiana titles published between 1836 and 1922.
Nine newspapers have been selected for consideration for the two-year project.
They include:
• Jasper Weekly Courier
• Plymouth Democrat
• Plymouth Republican
• Indiana State Sentinel
• Indiana Journal
• Indiana American
• Indianapolis Leader
• Wabash Express
• Randolph County Journal
Work has started on digitizing microfilm from the Indiana State Library’s collection for the Jasper and Plymouth newspapers, said Chris Ittenbach, project manager for the effort.
Additional microfilm has been selected from the Indiana Historical Society to complete the project, he said.
Once the microfilm has been scanned, each image is examined for readability and then submitted for further processing for search capability, including keyword searching, Ittenbach said.
The project is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Newspapers digitized as part of the project will be included in the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America database at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.
In addition to the Indiana papers presence in the Chronicling America database, the digitized papers will also be available through Indiana Memory
(www.indianamemory.org), a collaborative effort to provide access to materials available in Indiana libraries, archives, museums and other cultural institutions.
For real-time project status reports, visit the project website at http://208.119.72.66/digiwiki.
