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| The Log Cabin Democrat, 1917, Chronicling America |
Arkansas State Archives
staff recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to take part in an annual meeting
as part of a grant that has allowed the Arkansas State Archives to digitize
hundreds of thousands of historical newspaper pages.
“We learned a great deal
about the grant and newspaper project from our meeting,” said Brian Irby,
archival assistant and project director.
“It was good to spend time with others who had received grants from the
program. Some of them were on their sixth cycle, which meant they had been in
the program for almost 12 years. They had a lot of advice they freely gave to
us.”
Arkansas State Archives
staff learned in August the division had again received
a grant from the National Endowment from the
Humanities to be part of the National Digital Newspaper Program’s Chronicling America. The program
is a joint effort by the National Endowment
for the Humanities and the Library of Congress and
aims to make historically significant newspaper articles available to the
public. Archives was awarded a $250,522 grant for a two-year cycle of 2019-2021
to continue to be part of the program, which focuses on articles published
between 1690 and 1963.
In 2017, the Arkansas
State Archives received a NEH grant of $208,128 for the grant cycle covering
2017-2019. That
grant funded digitizing more than 103,000 pages from 40 Arkansas
newspapers, which were submitted to the Library of Congress. The grant period
ended on Aug. 31, 2019.
As part of the grant
program, Irby and Archival Assistant Darren Bell traveled to Washington, D.C.,
Sept. 10-12. The meetings were held at the Library of Congress and the National
Endowment for the Humanities. Irby and Bell attended sessions on topics that
included cataloging, microfilming procedures and public outreach.
Representatives from
institutions across the country attended, which allowed attendees to exchange
ideas and network. The newspaper project includes 48 states and two territories
and has made 15 million newspaper ages available online since starting in 2007,
according to a news
release from NEH.
“We are pleased to
continue to be included in a project that will make historically significant
newspapers in Arkansas accessible to people nationwide,” Irby said.
