The Digital Blog

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Historical Society has been awarded three grants totaling more than $430,000 from public and private sources.
The funding will benefit the society’s digital archives collections, preservation of Ohio battlefields efforts and educational outreach to classrooms respectively.
“As a nonprofit organization, the Ohio Historical Society relies heavily on grants and private contributions to supplement ever-dwindling state funds,” said William K. Laidlaw, OHS executive director and CEO. “The three grants will make a significant impact on these programs and will help our organization to continue its mission to preserve and interpret Ohio’s history.”

The Ohio Newspaper Digitization Project

The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded $353,069 to the Ohio Historical Society to begin digitization of Ohio’s microfilmed newspapers.

The Ohio Newspaper Digitization Project, a part of the National Digital Newspaper Program developed by NEH and the Library of Congress, will digitize 100,000 Ohio newspaper pages between the year of 1880 and 1922 during the two-year grant period. Newspapers digitized as part of the grant award will be included in the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America database at www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica.

“The ultimate goal over the next 20 years is to create a national online, searchable resource of historically significant newspapers,” said Angela O’Neal, OHS collections technical services manager who oversees the Historical Society’s digital collections.

The Ohio Newspaper Digitization Project will build upon an earlier NEH initiative, the United States Newspaper Program, which enabled the Society to locate, catalog and microfilm Ohio’s newspapers. As a result, the society holds the most complete Ohio newspaper microfilm collection in the state comprising some 20,000 volumes of newsprint.

Because the initial project will be limited to a small number of newspapers, an advisory group of journalists, historians, educators, scholars, librarians and archivists will select the titles to be digitized, according to O’Neal. “This is just the beginning,” she said. “The Society will continue to apply for NEH funds in upcoming grant cycles until we can complete the Ohio Newspaper Digitization Project.”