From the desk of Shawn Schollmeyer

We are very excited to announce that we will be able to continue our historic newspaper digitization project for an additional two years. The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) is a collaborative grant program between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, seeking to fund state newspaper digitization projects and make select titles available through the Chronicling America website. The long term goal is to provide access to public domain newspaper titles in all U.S. states and territories (1836-1922). The Washington State Library will coordinate scanning and prepping another 100,000 pages from microfilm for remaining titles in Seattle and Olympia. A panel of partner libraries across the state has pre-selected over 25 titles representing large and small communities and historically significant regions to share on the Chronicling America site. Among  the titles already available are  the Aberdeen Herald, Colfax Gazette, Lynden Tribune, San Juan Islander, and Tacoma Times. More information about the state program and other titles is available on our WIKI page.

The microfilm for the three remaining titles is housed in the Washington State Library and University of Washington collections. We will continue our collaboration with the UW Libraries Microfilm and Newspaper department where we have two students helping us evaluate and process necessary metadata for each page posted to the Library of Congress public website.

Shawn Schollmeyer is the project manager for the Washington State Library. Her contact information is [email protected], 360-570-5568.