United States Newspaper Program
Since the early 1980's, the Library of Congress and the National Endowment
for the Humanities have collaborated in a unique partnership to fund
and manage the United
States Newspaper Program, a highly successful effort to locate, catalog,
and preserve newspapers published throughout the United States, providing
continued access for scholars and researchers to the "first draft" of
U.S. history as recorded in the press. Projects were established and funded
in each state and territory surveying every possible repository in the attempt
to locate extant issues of every newspaper; inventory and catalog those
titles in national database; and preserve endangered files on microfilm
following national and international preservation standards.
The fragility of newsprint should be obvious to anyone who, having
failed to inform either the delivery service or an accommodating neighbor,
returns from a short vacation to find the news of the past few days rapidly
deteriorating on the front stoop. Even a half-day in bright sun will
discolor the front page, and touch will betray the imminent disintegration
of the paper. We think little of it beyond the immediate bother. We all,
readers and publishers alike, appreciate that in an age when news is
considered to be old often before ink can dry on the page, newsprint
remains a remarkably efficient, portable, inexpensive, and - most important
- replaceable media for distribution. The daily news is intended to be
read and thrown away or, we hope, recycled. Newsprint is designed to
disappear, and to be replaced. Only the latest news is, after all, considered
"newsworthy."
For social historians,
no other published record captures the day-to-day life of a community
and the thoughts and habits of its citizens better than the local newspaper,
and the loss of even an issue or two can be a break in understanding
and interpreting the chain of events. No matter how great the city or
how powerful its leading men and women, beneath the headlines can be
found the ordinary daily record of the community's social structure,
politics, health, cultural life, commerce, and sport. Newspapers are
the single most important source for understanding the development of
ethnic communities throughout the United States, and too often serve
as the only source for understanding the development of the nation's
small towns and regions. And for those of us who wish to understand our
own family histories, newspapers are a rich source not only for the vital
facts about our forbears, but also give us a glimpse of the way they
lived; what they shopped for; what medicines they took; how they were
entertained; what they celebrated; and what they feared. For historians,
archivists, and researchers, though, the commercial advantages of newsprint
quickly become a liability.
Until the mid-1800's, newspapers in the United States were published
on paper made using cotton rag fiber. Our libraries and archives hold
many fine examples of newspapers dating from the early eighteenth century
that have survived in excellent condition and will, if properly handled
and cared for, survive for generations to come. Production of rag paper
was (and remains) and expensive process, however; and as the 19th century
progressed, technology and increased literacy combined to encourage cheaper
production of paper. The boom in publishing in the latter half of the
19th century was made possible in great part by the invention of cheap
paper.
By the 1880's most mass market publications were being published on
paper that replaced the more expensive rag content with untreated ground
wood fibers, and additional substances to prevent discoloration and decrease
porosity. Paper made using this process carries within itself reactive
agents that will speed its deterioration. Excessive moisture will speed
the production of acids that weaken the paper. Excessive heat and dryness
will embrittle the paper. The cheapest and least stable form of this
paper is newsprint. In addition to its obvious fragility, today's newsprint
is especially susceptible to damage caused by heat, light, dampness,
and airborne pollutants.
Conservators have developed a range of treatments and techniques that
stabilize and in some cases even strengthen paper made from ground wood
pulp, but the high cost and effort required can be justified only for
very special items in a collection of high intrinsic value. Libraries,
archives, and research collections that seek to provide continued access
to large newspaper collections will opt to preserve the intellectual
content of the publications through reformatting, usually by preservation
microfilming.
The
Library of Congress and New York Public Library have been microfilming
newspapers since the late 1930's. The life-expectancy of early film,
however, was less than a generation. More recent developments in film
stability and environmental controls, combined with refinements in high-resolution
photographic equipment, provide assurance that microfilm produced, processed,
and stored in adherence to national and international standards will
serve researchers well into the next millennium and beyond. Appropriate
bibliographic control is an essential component to the preservation effort.
Accurate and authoritative citations assure that preserved material can
be accessed, and that costly duplication of preservation efforts can
be avoided. Comprehensive bibliographic information allows the researcher
to determine where a title is held, what issues are available or missing,
and any unique identifying elements such as editions or title changes.
Through a coordinated effort, the USNP has been able to assure that all
appropriate standards and practices are employed in accomplishing the
mission of the program. In addition, by training and equipping staff
in each state, there is assurance that preservation activities can continue
beyond the term of the grant-funded project.
The United States Newspaper Project (USNP) has supported projects in
each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the
U.S. Virgin Islands. USNP projects were organized as cooperative efforts
within each state, generally with one agency serving as the project manager.
Project staff inventory collections in public libraries, courthouses,
newspaper offices, historical museums, college and university libraries,
archives, and private collections. Detailed records of holdings enable
states and institutions to fill gaps and complete runs from holdings
scattered throughout a state or in other states. The records also
assist researchers in locating the exact issues they wish to search.
Bibliographic and holdings records are entered into a national database
maintained by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and accessible
throughout the world via OCLC's WorldCat service, available through most
libraries and through the World Wide Web. Microfilm copies of newspapers
are available to researchers anywhere in the country through interlibrary
loan. Funded activity under the USNP was completed in 2010, at which time project staff had cataloged
nearly 200,000 newspaper titles and produced microfilm of approximately
60 million pages of newsprint.
While the work of USNP projects in each state has provided a basis for
continuing newspaper preservation efforts, the program will ultimately
convert only a percentage of deteriorating newsprint to microfilm. In
a few states, legislation mandating deposit of newspapers provides some
assurance that a program to assure continued access for research will
be maintained. In most states, however, that assurance will be possible
only through the continued cooperative effort of archivists, librarians,
historians, and genealogists, all of whom know too well the challenge
they face.
For technical information on microfilming newspapers see USNP
Preservation Microfilming Guidelines.
For more information, contact the USNP
Coordinator, Mark Sweeney, Library of Congress,
or the Division of Preservation
and Access, National Endowment for the Humanities.
For additional reading see John Connell's bibliography; Newspaper and Periodical Articles 1983-1998.
For additional information on preservation of newspapers see Preserving
Newspapers.
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