21.213 request for proposals: National Digital Newspaper Program

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 21, No. 213.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 06:30:26 +0100
         From: "Laura Gottesman" <lgot_at_loc.gov>
         Subject: RFP-Cooperative Agreements: National Digital
Newspaper Program

Posted at the request of the National Endowment for the Humanities,
Division of Preservation and Access. Please feel free to forward as
appropriate.

Request for Proposals-Cooperative Agreements for the National Digital
Newspaper Program (A Partnership between NEH and the Library of
Congress)

URL: http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/ndnp.html

Program Overview

-- Award amount: up to $400,000
-- Deadline for submission: November 1, 2007
-- Award announcement: June 2008
-- Grant period: 2 years beginning July 2008

NEH is soliciting proposals from institutions to participate in the
National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). 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. [See the beta prototype Web site,
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers at
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/ .] An accompanying national
newspaper directory of bibliographic and holdings information on the Web
site will direct users to newspaper titles available in all types of
formats. LC will also digitize and contribute to the NDNP database a
significant number of newspaper pages drawn from its own collections
during the course of this partnership between NEH and the Library.

The NDNP will be implemented in several phases, gradually extending its
chronological coverage. Since 2005, awards to state projects are
supporting the selection and digitization of titles published in
California, Florida, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Texas,
Utah, and Virginia between 1880 and 1910. The Endowment intends to fund
projects in all states and U.S. territories provided that sufficient
funds allocated for this purpose are available. One organization within
each U.S. state or territory will receive an award to collaborate with
relevant state partners in this effort. Previously funded projects will
be eligible for continued support to digitize pages from new decades, as
the program increases its chronological span. During this phase of NDNP,
successful applicants will select newspapers-published in their state in
English between 1880 and 1922-and convert, primarily from microfilm,
over a period of two years, approximately 100,000 pages into digital
files, according to the technical guidelines
(http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/pdf/NDNP_200810TechNotes.pdf) outlined by the
Library of Congress.

NDNP builds on the foundation established by an earlier NEH initiative:
the United States Newspaper Program (USNP). Since 1982, the Endowment
has supported a cooperative, national effort to locate, catalog, and
preserve on microfilm American newspapers published from the 18th
century to the present. NEH has funded newspaper projects in all the
fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin
Islands. When completed in 2009, USNP will have provided bibliographic
control to widely scattered newspapers and have preserved on microfilm
(to consistent national standards) selected titles from this vulnerable
corpus. LC has provided technical assistance for the USNP since its
inception.

NEH expects to award two-year cooperative agreements (of up to $400,000
each), depending on the availability of funds. The Guidelines for the
Request for Proposals are located at:
http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/ndnp.html . LC*s technical
guidelines are found at:
http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/pdf/NDNP_200810TechNotes.pdf .

For information about the application process, contact the Division of
Preservation and Access at 202-606-8570 or e-mail at
preservation_at_neh.gov. The postal address is:

National Digital Newspaper Program
Division of Preservation and Access
Room 411
National Endowment for the Humanities
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20506

Hearing-impaired applicants can contact NEH via TDD at 1-866-372-2930.

All questions relating to the technical guidelines should be directed
to LC staff at ndnptech_at_loc.gov.

>>>>>

Laura Gottesman
Digital Reference Team
The Library of Congress
< http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-digital.html >
Received on Thu Aug 16 2007 - 01:24:33 EDT