NEH Announces Mass Newspaper Digitzation Project

The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced a massive project with the Library of Congress -- the National Digital Newspaper Program . This program will digitize tens of millions of historical newspaper pages and make them available online. The available content will be based at the Library of Congress and will be made available for free.

Bruce Cole's speech announcing this project is available at http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/speeches/11162004.html . (This is a copy of the speech, not the audio.) From the speech: "When it is complete, it will ultimately cover 1836 through 1922. That sounds strange, but it?s for a couple of very good reasons. The type from colonial times has elaborate fonts and OCR technology can?t read it well yet.... Eventually, whether it?s online or offline, the holdings and their locations will be part of a bibliography the Library of Congress is assembling. It will tell where every newspaper is located--from the first American newspaper in 1690 to the present day.... "

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