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September 24, 2024
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Kent Randall and Toben Traver look at microfilm from the newspaper digitization project
Funding Boost Extends Digitization Project

With great excitement, we share The New Hampshire Digital Newspaper Project (NHDNP)—a Dartmouth Libraries-led initiative to digitize historic state newspapers—received almost $325,000 in grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities in August. 

The award will continue funding for the project through 2026. With it, we’ll add 100,000 more pages to the Library of Congress’ “Chronicling America” collection. Chronicling America provides free, high quality, text-searchable images of historic newspapers, dramatically increasing their accessibility to scholars, students, and the public. 

The NHDNP is a collaborative effort between Dartmouth, the New Hampshire State Library, the University of New Hampshire, and the New Hampshire Historical Society. Between 2022 and 2024, the project digitized thirty-four newspapers housed on over 150 reels of microfilm, together comprising many thousands of issues, and over 105,000 pages of newsprint.

Highlights from the first phase of the project include the New Hampshire Gazette – the state’s oldest paper, with issues beginning in 1756 – and Among the Clouds, a paper published at the summit of Mt. Washington. In this second phase of the project, our digitization efforts will focus on expanding access to New Hampshire’s earliest papers, as well as newspapers produced in the White Mountains region of the state. 

This funding extension comes at such an exciting time for the project. We’ve just wrapped up our first award, and are already seeing a huge increase in traffic to the over 100,000 pages of digitized content on Chronicling America. This additional funding allows us to expand the titles we digitize, including some that our New Hampshire community have requested. The new titles will broaden the collection's geographic and temporal reach, while also delving further into New Hampshire’s fascinating 18th century history.

NHDNP Project Manager, Toben Traver
Explore The Project
four logos as part of the chronicling america project: library of congress, national endowment for the humanities, dartmouth libraries, and university of new hampshire

The NDNP is a long-term partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress to develop a free, searchable database of U.S. Newspapers from all states and territories. Dartmouth Libraries' is a collaborative partner with the New Hampshire State Library, New Hampshire Historical Society, and University of New Hampshire. Check out New Hampshire's contribution to Chronicling America.

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