LECTURE: Nothing in Life is Free…Unless You are Talking about NDNP… Chronicling America 1690 – 1963
SESSION: S445
DAY & TIME: Saturday, 05 May, 2018, 2:30 p.m.
Sponsors: National Digital Newspaper Program; National Endowment for the Humanities; Library of Congress, Clarke Historical Library; Central Michigan University

The continual demand for accessible, digital historic newspapers has led to an exciting, ever-growing, public collaboration of history, knowledge, and technology. In response to this demand, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) created the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) and awarded grant funding to five state partners in 2005.

The Chronicling America website was created by the Library of Congress from this initial funding and now hosts over 12,500,000 newspaper pages. This presentation will teach you about the evolution of the NDNP, how to navigate through the newspapers, and discover additional resources offered on the Chronicling America website. Additionally, learn how this program has inspired the creation of other external educational resources, content collections which make discovery easier, and mapping tools which help researchers.

Leave this session with a better understanding of how Chronicling America and external tools can help you discover more about your ancestors, track family movements in the United States, share discoveries with other genealogists, and fully use the digital resources available.

Conference attendees are also invited to a one-on-one chat with Clarke Historical Library staff at Exhibitor Booth 426. There you can ask additional questions and view a demonstration of the Chronicling America website designed for genealogical research. We encourage you to visit Booth 426 and share additional tips, tricks, and resources with the staff! During the conference, follow us on Twitter @DigMichNews for Booth updates.

ABOUT: Kimberly Hagerty has been the Project Manager of the Michigan NDNP since 2012. She was instrumental in developing a digital newspaper conversion service at Central Michigan University in 2008 that led to the creation of the newspaper database Digital Michigan Newspapers and the Digital Michigan Newspaper Portal website.