NEH: Chronicling America
Just in case newspapers go the way of the dodo bird, or are subjected to a losing death panel debate (ha, ha), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is digitizing them (at least ones published between 1880 and 1922) and this summer posted its 1 millionth page.
The Chronicling America program, a partnership of NEH and the Library of Congress (LOC) is a free searchable database that provides everyone with the intertubes access to “historically significant” U.S. newspapers (many of which, sadly, were euthanized long ago). The names of some of the papers tell a certain story about the times (after Reconstruction to just before the Great Depression), and the national landscape (more farms). A LOC flickr photostream offers some of the images from the project.
State partners (universities and such) win funding and decide which papers to chronicle. So far, content from 11 states and the District of Columbia is represented. The goal is to chronicle 20 million pages, officials say, and recently opened another round of grants to make it happen. (Proposals are due Nov. 3, 2009.)
Pretty ambitious, but I have no doubt it will get done, as long as Congress continues to support the small endowment.
And it’s likely to do so, given that one of its own now runs the place: Former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach was sworn in as the ninth NEH chairman a few days ago.