May 11, 2018 Utah Digital Newspapers History

The Utah Digital Newspapers (UDN) project is one of the longest running state-wide digital newspaper repositories in the United States. UDN started in in 2001 with a Library Services and Technology (LSTA) research and development grant to digitize 30,000 pages from the Vernal Express, Grand Valley Times/Times Independent, and Wasatch Wave. In 2002, the Marriott Library launched the official UDN website (https://digitalnewspapers.org) to make these digital newspapers freely available.

Over the course of the next decade, UDN was awarded several more grants to continue building this newspaper repository. In 2003, a second LSTA grant was awarded for digitizing 100,000 pages. This included matching funds from the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC) and several public libraries. Also in 2003, an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant with matching funds from the BYU Library helped digitize 240,000 pages.

UDN was one of the first recipients of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. NDNP grants were awarded to UDN in 2005, 2007, and 2009, with each of these digitizing 100,000 pages. Newspaper content from these grants is also available on Chronicling America (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/).

With the help of all of these grant projects, UDN was the first state-wide digital newspaper repository to reach 1,000,000 pages in 2010. Over the course of the next several years, many more organizations and individuals helped support the digitization of newspapers from Utah (see the Acknowledgements section of the UDN website). In 2017, UDN hit the 2,000,000 page mark and we are continuing to grow.

For more information about the Utah Digital Newspapers project, see the following articles and presentation:

• Arlitsch, K., Yapp, L., and Edge, K. (2003). Utah Digital Newspapers Project. D-Lib Magazine, 9(3). https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=703181
• Herbert, J., Arlitsch, K. (2004). digitalnewspapers.org: The Digital Newspapers Program at the University of Utah. Serials Librarian, 47(1/2), 99-115. https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=702233
• Myntti, J. (2017). Utah Digital Newspapers Update. Presentation given at the Mountain West Digital Library Digitization Committee Meeting. https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1283558

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