About

Background

2008-2010

In 2008, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the Ohio History Connection $353,069 to begin digitization of Ohio’s microfilmed newspapers. The National Digital Newspaper Program in Ohio (NDNP-OH) is a part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Library of Congress (LC) and state projects to provide enhanced access to historic newspaper pages published between 1690 and 1963. NEH awards support state projects to select and digitize historically significant titles that are aggregated and permanently maintained by the Library of Congress at Chronicling America. Through this website, historic newspaper pages are both freely available and keyword searchable. NDNP-OH is building upon an earlier NEH initiative, the United States Newspaper Program, which enabled the Ohio History Connection to locate, catalog and microfilm Ohio’s newspapers. As a result, the Ohio History Connection holds the most complete Ohio newspaper microfilm collection in the state comprising some 48,000 rolls.

Over the course of the 2-year project, ending June 30, 2010, NDNP-OH contributed over 100,000 historic newspaper pages to Chronicling America. 14 titles published between 1880 and 1922 were selected from 10 regions around the state by an advisory group of 18 journalists, historians, educators, scholars, librarians and archivists. 10 of these members represented regional interests.

2010-2012

In 2010, NEH awarded an additional $334,000 to the Ohio History Connection to continue its digitization of Ohio’s microfilmed newspapers. NDNP-OH digitized 26 Ohio newspapers—more than 100,000 pages—between the years of 1845 and 1894, with an emphasis on the Civil War era.

2012-2014

NEH awarded the Ohio History Connection additional funding in 2012 to continue its newspaper digitization project into 2014. The $248,600 reward allowed another 100,000 pages of Ohio’s historical newspapers to be digitized for Chronicling America, including a short run of a German-language newspaper. This grant award was extended through the end of August 2015, and surplus funding was used to digitize an additional 15,000 pages of Ohio’s historical newspapers for Chronicling America. NDNP-OH staff also provided a number of presentations around the state on Chronicling America and newspaper digitization standards and best practices.

2016-2018

The Ohio History Connection received $200,000 of supplemental grant funding in 2016 to digitize 100,000 more Ohio newspaper pages for Chronicling America. This fourth cycle of funding will focus on digitizing foreign language and ethnic press titles representing some of Ohio’s most prominent immigrant communities from the 19th and early 20th centuries: Czech, Hungarian German, German, Polish, Romanian and Slovak.

2018-2020

The Ohio History Connection received $246,798 in 2018 to digitize 100,000 more Ohio newspaper pages for Chronicling America. This fifth cycle of funding will focus on digitizing newspapers published 1920-1960, covering significant events and cultural changes of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II and beyond.

About the Ohio History Connection

The Ohio History Connection, formerly the Ohio Historical Society, is a statewide history organization with the mission to spark discovery of Ohio’s stories. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization chartered in 1885, the Ohio History Connection carries out history services for Ohio and its citizens focused on preserving and sharing the state’s history. This includes housing the state historic preservation office, the official state archives, local history office and managing more than 50 sites and museums across Ohio.

Updates

Documents

Reports

These reports are submitted biannually to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. Please note that reports may include links to items that are no longer active and attachments/addenda have not been included.

Non-NDNP Digital Newspaper Archive Survey

NDNP awardees are responsible for locating other freely available digital newspaper resources for their state and compiling information about these resources into on a Library of Congress-developed spreadsheet. For each title located, the publisher location, dates of publication, LCCNs, site owner/producer, URL, dates of digital edition and number of issues available and other information are provided.

2016 Non-NDNP Newspaper Archive Survey (click to download)
2012 Non-NDNP Newspaper Archive Survey (click to download)
2010 Non-NDNP Newspaper Archive Survey (click to download)

National Digital Newspaper Program in Ohio

Ohio's contribution to Chronicling America