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From: "Sally Rolls Pavia" <>
Subject: The Colorado History Museum has digitized more than 75 historic newspapers
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 18:33:28 -0700

The Colorado History Museum has digitized more than 75 historic newspapers
from 20 Colorado cities covering 1859 to 1923. You can search them online at
http://host1.cdpheritage.org/newspapers using the same system as for the
Winona newspapers. Browse by issue or date, or search by keyword.

Research using historic newspapers is undertaken only by the most tenacious
researcher, as it requires hours of time at microform readers, using
guesswork to select newspaper issues likely to contain the required
information. Only major 20th century newspapers are indexed, so individuals
doing research find newspaper research at best unsatisfactory due to limited
tools to support their work.

New digital technology offers the opportunity to open the vast resources of
historic newspapers to historians, genealogists, historic preservationists,
teachers and students by providing article level and keyword indexing of all
newspapers. Providing a statewide and local view of historic events and
people has not been undertaken by any state as yet. This new digital
technology has the capacity to provide this capability, and the
Collaborative Digitization Program (CDP) is well-positioned to use existing
partnerships and collaborative organizational structure to succeed.

The Collaborative Digitization Program , the Colorado State Library (CSL),
and the Colorado Historical Society (CHS) are partnering on this proposal to
create "Colorado's Historical Newspaper Collection." This project will serve
as the foundation for a statewide historic newspaper database, beginning
with 44 newspapers dating from 1859 to 1880 . The database will include full
text indexing of all articles, graphics, letters to the editor, and
advertising. The user can view articles individually or in the context of
the full page of the paper. Users are able to search a topic, individual or
organization in a single newspaper, any combination of papers, or all 44
papers. The papers will be digitized from the microfilm version of the
papers that are owned by the Colorado Historical Society. Further processing
using software specifically designed for historic newspapers by Olive
Software Inc. will create the database. Colorado's Historical Newspaper
Collection will be available on the web as part of the Colorado Virtual
Library. .Links will be provided to the Collection from the CDP website and
from the Heritage Colorado database through metadata records for each of the
newspaper titles.

While this proposal covers only the Colorado newspapers published through
1880, the intent of the partners is to use this grant to fund the basic
infrastructure for the historic newspaper collection to grow. Additional
newspapers would be added to the Collection as funds are procured. It is the
intent of the partners and members of the Advisory Committee that the
Colorado Historical Newspaper Collection would eventually include papers
through 1923, a total of 1,639,000 pages. Additional years beyond 1923 will
be digitized if they come into the public domain.

The Colorado State Library awarded the Colorado Digitization Program,
Colorado Historical Society and the Colorado State Library a grant of
$120,000 vs. the $185,000 requested. As a result the project will be scaled
down. The LSTA funds will be used to purchase the hardware and software
license. The project partners will have to raise funds to pay for the
digitization of the microfilm.

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• The Colorado History Museum has digitized more than 75 historic newspapers by "Sally Rolls Pavia" <>