The University of Delaware Library will host a presentation on the National Digital Newspaper Program – to be led by the Library of Congress’ digital projects specialist, Nathan Yarasavage, and UD Library’s discovery services librarian, Molly Olney-Zide – from 2-3 p.m., Wednesday, July 20, in Room 114 of the Morris Library.

The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership with the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), was founded in 2005 with a goal to digitize historic U.S. newspapers from 1836-1922.

Predominantly preserved in microfilm, these newspapers are digitized using NEH grant funds and made full-text searchable via the freely-available database Chronicling America. Qualifying state institutions are awarded two-year grants and are supported in the digitization of up to 100,000 pages per grant cycle. Chronicling America has nearly 11 million pages from over 40 states and territories available for research.

The University of Delaware Library was awarded an NEH grant in September 2015 to join the NDNP during the 2015-17 cycle, and the Delaware Digital Newspaper Project began that month. The first Delaware newspapers (roughly 10,000 pages) will be available to search on Chronicling America during late summer or early fall.

The UD Library project team includes:

• Gregg Silvis (project director), associate university librarian for Information Technology and Digital Initiatives;
• Molly Olney-Zide (project manager), discovery services librarian, Library Information Technology User Support Department;
• Anna Ashikhmina, associate librarian, Metadata Services Department;
• David Cardillo, library assistant II, Center for Digital Collections;
• Mary Durio, associate librarian and head, Center for Digital Collections;
• Theresa Hessey, library assistant III, Center for Digital Collections; and
• Tom Pulhamus, library assistant III, Center for Digital Collections.

Yarasavage, digital projects specialist at the Library of Congress since 2010, oversees digital data quality review for the NDNP and guides awardees through the process of validating their digital data.

Prior to working at the Library of Congress, Yarasavage led newspaper and serial digitization projects at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the co-principal investigator for the Illinois Digital Newspaper Project. He holds a master of library science degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

This presentation will appeal to anyone interested in learning more about the history and future of the National Digital Newspaper Program, the current activities of the Delaware Digital Newspaper Project, and how to get the most out of the freely-available Chronicling America database. This is event is free and open to the UD community and the public.