UW Receives Third NEH Grant for Wyoming Digital Newspaper Project

University of Wyoming Libraries has received a third round of funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support ongoing newspaper digitization work.

The two-year, $263,100 grant will support the ongoing Wyoming Digital Newspaper Project, which began in August 2019 after the first NEH grant was awarded.

The project’s current phase involves UW Libraries employees digitizing 100,000 pages of select Wyoming newspapers -- dating from 1867-1963 -- as part of the state’s participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). After employees digitize the pages, they upload them to the Chronicling America website, a free, searchable database of historic American newspapers. The UW Libraries team has digitized and uploaded more than 200,000 pages to the website since the start of the project.

Newspapers added during the first two rounds of grant funding include The Arapahoe Agency Courier, The Big Horn Sentinel, Bill Barlow’s Budget and Converse County Review, The Buffalo Bulletin, The Casper Daily Tribune, The Cheyenne Daily Leader, The Cody Enterprise, The Kemmerer Republican, The Laramie Republican, the Park County Herald, the Platte Valley Lyre, The Saratoga Sun and The South Pass News.

“This third round of funding will allow continued growth of the collection to reflect the diverse communities and histories of Wyoming,” says Bryan Ricupero, the grant’s principal investigator and UW Libraries digital collections and metadata librarian. “We’re in the process of selecting new titles to add to the collection, and we’re planning to expand coverage to include different geographical locations we’ve not been able to cover yet.”

The Wyoming State Archives and UW Libraries are the two primary repositories for Wyoming print and microfilm newspaper collections. Master copies of all microfilmed titles are currently held at the Wyoming State Archives and are available for UW Libraries to duplicate and digitize. This microfilm was created during the National Newspaper Project to standards compatible with the NDNP.

In addition to Ricupero, the Wyoming Digital Newspaper Project team is composed of Rachael Laing, a library specialist and grant project specialist.

Members of UW Libraries’ Digital Collections office will present on Wyoming digital newspapers Thursday, Nov. 2, at 3 p.m. The workshop will focus on the content and functionalities of https://wyomingnewspapers.org, which contains approximately 5 million pages of digitized Wyoming newspapers from the late 19th century to 2021. The workshop will be offered in person in Room 302 of Coe Library and online. Those interested in attending should register by going to https://uwyo.libcal.com/event/11114229.

About the National Endowment for the Humanities

NEH is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States. NEH grants typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television and radio stations, and to individual scholars.

For more information about NEH, go to www.neh.gov.