Connecticut State Library Receives Grant for Newspaper Digitization

The Connecticut State Library is pleased to announce that it has received an award of $274,034 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a two-year National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) grant to digitize historically significant Connecticut newspapers. The digital images will be included in the Library of Congress’ newspaper site: Chronicling America.

Following the NDNP guidelines, the $274,034 grant will allow Connecticut to add 100,000 pages, digitized from microfilm of newspapers published in the state between 1836 and 1922. An advisory committee consisting of an historian, journalist, educator, librarian, and archivist will select the newspapers to be scanned.

“This is a great honor for Connecticut – a state where newspapers have always been important,” said State Librarian Kendall Wiggin.  Wiggin noted that while Connecticut boasts the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper, the Courant, by 1875, there were 78 newspapers being published in the state, including 17 dailies and 51 weeklies.

This project builds upon the earlier Connecticut Newspaper Project (1991-2002) which inventoried the state’s newspaper repositories, cataloged the newspapers and preserved over 1,000,000 pages of 437 newspapers on microfilm. The State Library has already worked with digitizing newspapers through its Newspapers of Connecticut project.  This has short runs of 86 titles from 1821-1929, for a total of 3,243 issues from 31 towns.

John N. Barry, Chair of the State Library Board noted that “This grant will allow the State Library to continue its work in providing easier access to the significant issues and events of our history.  Connecticut’s newspapers are irreplaceable sources of obtaining knowledge, and this digitization grant will continue the modernization of preserving Connecticut’s rich history.”