Digital editions bring the history of Maine to your fingertips
Photo / Billy Hathorn, WIkimedia Commons
The Maine State Library in Augusta. The library was recently awarded $275K for the digitization of historical Maine newspapers.
The Maine State Library in Augusta has received a $275,000 federal grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize over 100,000 pages of historical Maine newspapers.
The two-year project will involve digitizing master microfilm copies of newspapers, allowing the text within the publications to be searched by the public once it has been uploaded to both the web-based Digital Maine repository and the Library of Congress Chronicling America archive.
Any Maine newspaper printed prior to 1923 could be included in the project provided that the master microfilm is available for imaging. Newspapers printed between 1923 and 1962 may also be eligible for digitization if the publisher is willing to provide a waiver of copyright to permit the content to be imaged and shared.
"Some original copies of Maine newspapers are so fragile that they can't be handled without causing permanent damage," Adam Fisher, director of collections development and digital initiatives at the Maine State Library, said in a statement. "There's an urgent need to get quality images of these papers today before the information contained in them is lost to time."
The Maine State Library is asking institutions and individuals holding master microfilm copies of historical Maine newspapers to contact the library if they are interested in having their collection considered for inclusion under this project.
Photo: Billy Hathorn, Wikimedia Commons
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