The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced that The State Historical Society of Missouri will join a select group of institutions to create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers. The Society will receive a $179,740 grant to digitize and provide access to 100,000 pages of Missouri newspapers from the period 1880-1920.
This award brings Missouri into the National Digital Newspaper Project, a twenty-year undertaking begun in 2005 to incorporate newspapers from all states and territories published between 1836 and 1922. The online database, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, is maintained by the Library of Congress and already contains papers from California, New York, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
The Missouri Press Association is a major partner in this effort and will contribute $10,000 in matching funds to the project. The Journalism Library and Secretary of State Robin Carnahan are also supporting the grant with outreach and educational activities and by providing increased access to digitized newspapers.