This session will provide an update on the DPLA Knight Foundation Planning Grant to learn more about the state of newspaper projects in the United States. We will also hear from states who have large newspaper digitization projects about some of their successes and challenges.
North Carolina
With over 400,000 pages and growing, the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s newspaper collection is the largest of its kind in the state. Despite this work, the Center could be buried under an onslaught of requests for more; in a recent survey, community newspapers are the second highest digitization priority for cultural heritage institutions in North Carolina. This presentation will discuss how the Center manages its distributed selection model, a recent content management system migration, and the ongoing challenges in meeting demand.
Georgia
The University of Georgia, home of the Digital Library of Georgia, has a long history of preserving and providing access to the state's newspaper heritage. Since 1953, the Georgia Newspaper Project has microfilmed more than 2500 titles, and it continues to film over 200 current newspapers on an ongoing basis. In 2007, the DLG debuted its first archive of digitized newspapers, and it now provides full-text access to over 700,000 newspaper pages. This presentation will discuss the demand for newspapers among our users, our selection criteria, our in-house digitization process, and future plans for expanding the collection.
