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| The Log Cabin Democrat, Conway, Arkansas, March 27, 1917, Chronicling America |
In the next few weeks, the Arkansas State
Archives will have scanned 40 newspaper titles, or about 103,000 pages, and
sent them to the Library of Congress. People will have a whole new way to
access these historical records online, said Wendy Richter, state historian
and director of the Arkansas State Archives.
“One of my
biggest goals for the Arkansas State Archives has been to make records more
accessible to the public,” Richter said. “This project puts tens of thousands
of documents at the fingertips of more people in Arkansas and nationwide.”
The Archives was
awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant of $208,128 in 2017 to be
part of a National Digital Newspapers Program that created the website Chronicling
America, which is an
open-source website.
The Newspapers
Program is a long-term effort to develop an internet-based, searchable database
of U.S. newspapers. Institutions from across the country are participating in
the project, which is a joint effort of the National Endowment for the
Humanities and the Library of Congress.
The Library of
Congress serves the U.S. Congress and is the de facto national library for the
U.S. The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent, federal
agency that supports research, education, preservation and public programs in
the humanities.
To make sure the
process runs smoothly, the Arkansas State Archives partnered with the
Mississippi Department of Archives and History to help with technical aspects
of creating and sending quality images. Apex CoVantage, the vendor the Archives
uses, has been duplicating microfilm and digitizing newspapers from the
duplication. Using the duplicated film protects the originals, staff said.
Processing the
newspapers and getting them online has been slow. At one point, the Library of
Congress experienced a backlog, but as of last month, 35,947 pages from
Arkansas newspapers were put online. More will go up soon, said Kelsey Kahlbaum-Hoisington,
project archivist.
“For me, the most
interesting thing about this project is getting to read the historical
newspapers,” Kahlbaum-Hoisington said. “I was surprised by the amount of humor
in the newspapers.”
