Wednesday, September 26, 2007

National Digital Newspaper Program: San Francisco Call 1900-1910 online

In an effort to make the nation's historic newspapers more readily available to all, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress have partnered to develop the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

From the NDNP website:

". . . Ultimately, over a period of approximately 20 years, NDNP will create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all the states and U.S. territories published between 1836 and 1922. This searchable database will be permanently maintained at the Library of Congress (LC) and be freely accessible via the Internet . . . . NDNP will be implemented in several phases. In May 2005, the NDNP began its development phase by making awards to six state projects that are selecting newspapers published in California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, and Virginia during the decade of 1900 to 1910. These projects are currently digitizing 100,000 pages, according to the technical guidelines outlined by the Library of Congress."

Currently, one can search and access articles online from newspapers from the six states mentioned above, including the San Francisco Call, for the years 1900 - 1910.

The San Francisco Call articles are available through two portals: the first is the California Newspaper Project (beta version) which has a Google-like interface. The second is the Chronicling America site offered through the Library of Congress which has an interface more like the periodical databases that SFPL provides for card holders.

The Magazines and Newspapers Center also has microfilm holdings for this title. For a description and brief history of the San Francisco Call, click here.

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