Remembering 9/11

Our friends at the Rural Blog have provided a resource for 9/11 Remembrances that includes newspapers from KY, some of which were scanned from UK collections then assembled at the KY Press Association's site.

More news about Digital Newspapers

More and more people are discovering the joy - and convenience - of digitized newspapers. Take, for example, professor and author Stephen Mihm's New York Times article The Biographer’s New Best Friend. Mihm's outlines biographer James McGrath Morris' search for all things Joseph Pulitzer and how, through the technology of digital newspapers, previously hidden and all-too-hard-to-find information is suddenly available and changing how stories might be told.

A shout out to our NDNP peeps at the University of California-Riverside for this great article!

Day of Digital Archives

It's an exciting time to be involved with digital archives, digital curation, digital stewardship, digital preservation, digital collection development, well....digital everything! To bring the issues surrounding digital work, the folks at (I'm assuming) the University of Virginia have called for a Day of Digital Archives on October 6, 2011.

"The Day of Digital Archives is an initiative to raise awareness of digital archives among both users and managers. On this day, archivists, digital humanists, programmers, or anyone else creating, using, or managing digital archives are asked to devote some of their social media output (i.e. tweets, blog posts, youtube videos, etc.) to describing their work with digital archives. By collectively documenting what we do, we will be answering questions like: What are digital archives? Who uses them? How are they created and managed? Why are they important? This year's Day of Digital Archives will be held on October 6th and entries will be gathered at the Day of Digital Archives blog http://dayofdigitalarchives.blogspot.com."

KY-NDNP will do what we can to participate here, on facebook, and on twitter (look for #digitalArchivesDay for all tweets related to The Day).

KY-NDNP4

That's right, kids, The University of Kentucky Libraries has been awarded a rare NEH fourth grant for the National Digital Newspaper Program.

Meanwhile, the program welcomes three new awardee states: Indiana, North Dakota, and West Virginia. Welcome one and all - meet you at the finish line!

Chronicling America gets a facelift!

Chronicling America, home base for most of our KY-NDNP content, has recently undergone a beautiful transformation.

Let our awardee partners at the Ohio Historical Society walk you through it with their fantastic post about the new interface. Go, now!

Google drops its Newspaper Digitization

In an article from Search Engine Land on May 20, 2011, Google announced that it is suspending its newspaper digitization efforts. What do you think?

With traditional newspapers struggling to stay afloat, this video posted courtesy PALEO FUTURE is fascinating from a historical standpoint, to say the least. Equally fascinating is what will ultimately become of paper print in the future. What do you think tomorrow's news will it come from and how will we access it?

newspaper preservation

[Participant and presenter, Vicky McCargar, used the above corrupted photo as an example of corrupted data during the Newspaper Archive Summit at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, Columbia ¦ LOS ANGELES TIMES FILE PHOTO]

Events of last week drove home just how tenuous newspaper preservation in the digital age really is.

There was the Newspaper Archive Summit in Columbia, Missouri. The talks centered on digital content and orphaned titles, how to preserve them, the costs, the risks, and most importantly, what's at stake if we don't. As documented in this piece from the Missourian by conference attendant, Tom Warhover, preserving digital content is a constant battle with sometimes tragic results.

Then, came the UK Libraries' Digital Library Services' presentation to the Kentucky Press Association Board of Directors. UK unveiled their latest tool for contemporary newspapers preservation called Paper Vault (Beta). Paper Vault allows for seamless upload of whole issues of print-ready PDFs. The files are then prepped for UK Libraries Trusted Digital Repository and for online access. Publishers from the larger conglomerate newspapers quickly dismissed the repository, citing contractual agreements with vendors who offer the goods behind a pay-wall. However, the smaller newspapers were equally enthusiastic about the opportunity.

Enlightening bookends to a digital week.

Making the Transition

So many newspapers are folding under the weight of digital media that it's hard to stay positive some days, that is if you're in the business of newspapers or preserving the first record of history, such is the case with KY-NDNP. But here comes a glimmer of hope from our friends at The Rural Blog who reports on the success of Connecticut's Register Citizen and California's Appeal-Democrat.

For more inspiration, try 10 Newspapers that Do It Right from Editor & Publisher.

Kudos to everyone working hard to keep our history alive.