The UNT Libraries recently received an additional two-year grant of $399,790 to expand its digitization of historic Texas newspapers, with pages from as early as 1860 and as late as 1922 digitized, says Cathy Hartman, left, the UNT Libraries’ assistant dean for digital and information technologies. The UNT Libraries first received a two-year $397,552 grant from NEH in 2007. This allowed the Digital Projects Unit to digitize 108,000 pages of newspapers published in Texas.

The UNT Libraries is one of 22 state partners, and the only partner from Texas, to receive National Endowment for the Humanities funding to digitize newspapers from the late 1800s and early 1900s for the National Digital Newspaper Program, “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.” In addition to providing those interested in Texas history with local perspectives of national news stories, such as the 1900 Galveston hurricane and World War I, Hartman says the 19th- and early 20th-century newspapers included human interest stories.

The UNT Libraries are also are a partner with the Oklahoma Historical Society, which received a $307,000 grant from NEH to make 100,000 pages of historical Oklahoma newspapers available to the National Digital Newspaper Project. The Digital Projects Unit will provide the technical expertise for the OHS, which has 85 percent of Oklahoma newspapers ever published on microfilm, Belden says.

“In 1844, the Cherokees published the Cherokee Advocate, which was the first newspaper in what is now Oklahoma,” she says. “Three newspapers existed in Indian Territory prior to the Civil War, related either to missions or tribal government, and 28 newspapers appeared between the war and 1889, the opening of the Unassigned Lands in the state to settlers. For the first time, these newspapers will be made available to the general public.”

The National Digital Newspaper Program, or NDNP, is a long-term effort from NEH and the Library of Congress to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with select digitization of historic papers. NDNP will create a national digital resource of historically significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 in all 50 states and U.S. territories.