The LSU Libraries' Special Collections division has been awarded a grant of $351,380 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to digitize 100,000 pages of Louisiana newspapers published from 1860 through 1922. The newspapers digitized during this two-year grant will be freely available via the Library of Congress's "Chronicling America" website.

The project builds on more than 60 years of work done by LSU Libraries staff to preserve Louisiana history by microfilming the state's newspapers of record. Today, Special Collections continues to produce archival-quality microfilm for 90 Louisiana newspapers that are not commercially filmed. As a result of the grant, microfilm will be digitized, and the images will be processed using optical character recognition software to create full-text searchable files that will be made available by the Library of Congress.

"People from every walk of life use our historical newspapers on microfilm," said Elaine Smyth, head of Special Collections and co-director of the project with Gina Costello, Digital Services Librarian. "Having free, keyword-searchable access via the Internet will be a big step forward for our users. We're excited to be able to begin adding Louisiana's newspapers to the Chronicling America project." An Advisory Board made up of twelve scholars, educators, archivists, and librarians known for their expertise in Louisiana history will help select which newspaper titles will be digitized in this initial project, which will end in June 2011.

As of June 2009, the Chronicling America website (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/) hosts more than 1 million pages of historic American newspapers. "Newspapers are the most important printed record of the history of our country at the local, state and national level. Now in a single search, users can dive into a million pages on the Chronicling America webpage and surface at the pages that contain the history of our past in real time," said Henry Snyder, former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at LSU and now Project Director for the California Digital Newspaper Project, University of California at Riverside, during an event held in Washington on June 16 to celebrate passing the million-page mark.

LSU's project co-director Gina Costello noted that collaboration is a key element of the project. "Fifteen states have already participated in the National Digital Newspaper Program, and they are all ready to help the seven new states that will be joining the program this year. We can pool our knowledge to make the project work better and more efficiently." Carole Watson, Acting Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities, agrees, adding that the Chronicling America project also "builds on more than twenty years of collaboration between the NEH and LC to preserve and make accessible the content of millions of pages of historically important American newspapers, first by microfilming and now by digitization."

NEH has designated LSU's project as a "We the People" project. "The goal of the 'We the People' initiative is to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture," said Watson. "I anticipate that [LSU's] project will contribute significantly to this effort."