Illinois Newspaper Project
Encyclopedia
United States Newspaper Program
The United States Newspaper Program is a national effort among the individual states and the US federal government to locate, catalog, and preserve on microfilm, newspapers published in the United States up to the present time. Funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and...
(USNP), a cooperative effort between the states and the federal government designed to identify, catalog, and preserve on microfilm the nation's historic newspaper heritage. The USNP was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
(NEH) and administered by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, who are currently funding the National Digital Newspaper Program
National Digital Newspaper Program
The National Digital Newspaper Program is a joint project between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress to create and maintain a publicly available, online digital archive of historically significant newspapers published in the United States between 1836 and 1922...
(NDNP), of which the INP is now a part.
Since its establishment in 1987, the INP has been staffed by librarians from the Illinois State Historical Library (ISHL), the Chicago Historical Society (CHS), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
(UIUC) Library, respectively. The ISHL, now the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum documents the life of the 16th U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, and the course of the American Civil War. Combining traditional scholarship with 21st century showmanship techniques, the popular museum continues to rank as one of the most visited...
(ALPL), participated from 1987 to 1995. The CHS, now the Chicago History Museum (CHM), worked on the project from 1989 to 2009 in the 19 northernmost Illinois counties. When the UIUC Library joined the project in June 1995 (and the INP relocated its offices there), it became responsible for the central and southern Illinois counties.
During the inventory
Inventory
Inventory means a list compiled for some formal purpose, such as the details of an estate going to probate, or the contents of a house let furnished. This remains the prime meaning in British English...
ing and microfilming phase of the project, the INP team traveled throughout Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
inventorying and cataloging collections held by libraries and repositories, private organizations, and individuals. Newspapers that had not already been preserved on microfilm were filmed to create a permanent record of this vanishing material.
A major goal of the INP is to facilitate access to Illinois newspapers and to preserve them. The project's web site hosts a searchable database of all newspapers that have been discovered and preserved. All microfilm produced for the INP is available to users through interlibrary loan
Interlibrary loan
Interlibrary loan is a service whereby a user of one library can borrow books or receive photocopies of documents that are owned by another library...
.
Inventory
Newsprint
Newsprint is a low-cost, non-archival paper most commonly used to print newspapers, and other publications and advertising material. It usually has an off-white cast and distinctive feel. It is designed for use in printing presses that employ a long web of paper rather than individual sheets of...
and microfilm, throughout the state. To make this task more manageable, the INP team divided Illinois into seven separate cataloging regions. Each region was researched, one county at a time.
The INP then conducted site visits to repositories throughout the state in order to complete a thorough inventory of their newspaper collections.
Catalog
Cataloging the newspapers created bibliographic access to these resources. This enables anyone to identify Illinois newspapers and determine where they are held in the state by consulting the INP Database, the Statewide Illinois Library Catalog, or WorldCatWorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog which itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories which participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative...
.
Newspaper cataloging standards developed by CONSER, a cooperative online serials cataloging program, were strictly adhered to. These cataloging practices for newspapers have been developed since the start of the U.S. Newspaper Program in the early 1980s.
Microfilm
During inventorying and cataloging work, notation was made of Illinois newspapers that had not been preserved on microfilm.The INP used four different vendors for preservation microfilming. These vendors (and the INP) closely adhered to the preservation microfilming guidelines that were mandated by the USNP and the Library of Congress. These preservation microfilming guidelines use a three-generation system.
| GENERATION | first | second | third |
|---|---|---|---|
| TITLE | camera master | print master | service copy |
| POLARITY | negative | negative | positive |
| PURPOSE | for archival storage | for duplication | for patron use |
| LOCATION | stored at Iron Mountain Iron Mountain Incorporated Iron Mountain Inc , founded in 1951, is a company whose headquarters are located in Boston, Massachusetts. It offers records management, information destruction and data backup services to more than 120,000 customers throughout North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia... |
stored at Vendor | stored at UIUC Library |
The third generation film, or service copy, is the film used by patrons. A service copy of all the microfilm created by the INP is available through interlibrary loan at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library.
Digitize
In August 2009, the INP began the next phase of the project: digitizationDigitizing
Digitizing or digitization is the representation of an object, image, sound, document or a signal by a discrete set of its points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal...
. By August 2011, the Illinois Newspaper Project will have digitized 100,000 pages of historically significant Illinois newspapers dating from 1865 to 1922. Newspapers digitized as part of this program can be accessed at the Library of Congress' Chronicling America
Chronicling America
Chronicling America is a website created by the newspaper digitization program, the National Digital Newspaper Program . The Chronicling America website contains digitized newspaper pages and information about historic newspapers to place the primary sources in context and support future...
web site.
Illinois Newspaper Project Database
The database shows when and where the newspapers were published. The holdings information is listed underneath the descriptive information about the newspaper, and informs users what repositories in Illinois have which issues, and whether they have original newsprint or microfilm. The Participant Locator provides specific contact information for all institutions that the INP has inventoried.
The database also provides search tips, information regarding newspaper title changes, and a user guide to assist with searching.
April 1987
The Illinois State Historical Library received a planning grantGrant (money)
Grants are funds disbursed by one party , often a Government Department, Corporation, Foundation or Trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal...
from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a survey
Questionnaire
A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case...
to assess the state's newspaper collections. ISHL staff sent more than 4,000 surveys to libraries
Library
In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...
, newspaper publishers, historical societies
Historical society
A historical society is an organization that collects, researches, interprets and preserves information or items of historical interest. Generally, a historical society focuses on a specific geographical area, such as a county or town or subject, such as aviation or rail. Many historical...
, genealogical organizations
Family History Society
A family history society is a society, often charitable or not-for-profit, that allows member genealogists and family historians to profit from shared knowledge. Large societies often own libraries, sponsor research seminars and foreign trips, and publish journals...
, library systems, county clerks, and some individuals and booksellers.
April 1989
With the planning phase completed, the Illinois Newspaper Project team received another grant from NEH to undertake the cataloging and inventorying work. The INP began inventorying and cataloging the newspaper collections at the ISHL in Springfield, IllinoisSpringfield, Illinois
Springfield is the third and current capital of the US state of Illinois and the county seat of Sangamon County with a population of 117,400 , making it the sixth most populated city in the state and the second most populated Illinois city outside of the Chicago Metropolitan Area...
and at the Chicago Historical Society in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
.
June 1995
The work on the collections at ISHL and CHS was completed. The INP relocated its office to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library in Urbana, IllinoisUrbana, Illinois
Urbana is the county seat of Champaign County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 41,250. Urbana is the tenth-most populous city in Illinois outside of the Chicago metropolitan area....
. Staff at CHS continued inventorying and cataloging other collections in INP Cataloging Region 7.
January 1996
The UIUC-based staff began inventorying and cataloging the newspaper collections at UIUC in 1996. INP staff completed work on the collection at UIUC in three years, identifying 73 unique Illinois newspapers for future preservation microfilming.July 1999-2002
INP staff at UIUC completed fieldwork in INP Cataloging Region 2. The Chicago Historical Society team took responsibility for inventorying and cataloging newspaper collections found in INP Cataloging Region 6.May 2005-December 2007
INP staff at UIUC completed fieldwork in INP Cataloging Region 4. INP staff also began preservation microfilming of unique Illinois newspapers from the UIUC Library collections and other institutions in the state. Staff at the Chicago History Museum (formerly the Chicago Historical Society) completed fieldwork in INP Cataloging Region 7.January 2008-June 2009
INP staff at UIUC completed fieldwork in INP Cataloging Region 3. The staff at CHM completed fieldwork in INP Cataloging Region 6, closing their project in April 2009. With the completion of fieldwork in INP Cataloging Regions 1-5, the staff at UIUC began the task of re-inventorying the newspaper microfilm collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield. INP also staff continued preservation microfilming of unique Illinois newspapers.In June 2009, UIUC Library received funding under the National Endowment for the Humanities' National Digital Newspaper Program to digitize culturally significant Illinois newspapers. Titles digitized as part of this program will be contributed to the Library of Congress' Chronicling America web site.
July 2009-
The Illinois Newspaper Project, as part of the USNP, completed work in July 2010. To date, INP staff has inventoried and cataloged 21,000+ U.S. newspaper titles, added 26,000+ holdings records to the newspaper union listUnion catalog
A union catalog is a combined library catalog describing the collections of a number of libraries. Union catalogs have been created in a range of media, including book format, microform, cards and more recently, networked electronic databases...
in OCLC, and microfilmed almost 2,250,000 pages. The INP has exhausted its grant funding for preservation microfilming of unique Illinois newspaper titles, having preserved on microfilm almost 500 titles.
Further reading
External links
- Official Site of the Illinois Newspaper Project
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library
- University of Illinois History, Philosophy & Newspaper Library
- INP Database User Guide
- Interlibrary Loan at the UIUC Library
- United States Newspaper Program
- National Endowment for the Humanities
- Library of Congress
- Chicago History Museum
- Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library
- Statewide Illinois Library Catalog
- CONSER: Cooperative Online Serials
- National Digital Newspaper Program
- Chronicling America