UNT Libraries are pleased to announce that the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress have selected us for a fourth, two-year cycle of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), to digitize Texas newspapers on the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America.

This award is for $200,000 and will build access to an additional 100,000 pages of Texas newspapers on Chronicling America, to spotlight community identity in Texas. This time, the news is even more exciting because these additional newspapers will be in Spanish and German.  Access to these additional issues and languages in a national context will represent and support the large populations in Texas whose ancestors settled here in the 19^th-century and documented their experiences in these very newspapers.  In addition to adding the newspapers to Chronicling America, where Texas identity can be preserved alongside other state awardees’ newspapers, we will include these newspapers in the Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP).  These will serve as a jewel in the TDNP collection because they serve the descendants of Spanish- and German-speaking Texas pioneers as they explored what was then a mysterious frontier.  These descendants comprise a large percentage of the Texas population, and we are proud to be able to represent them in NDNP.  All of the newspapers available in Chronicling America and visible in the TDNP collection are freely accessible for research and education.  As a result, we try continually to inform teachers and students about the importance of newspapers in understanding history.

Newspapers illustrate cultural mergings in many ways, from the very languages in which they were written, to the different groups of people who lived in and settled the areas where the issues were disseminated, to the governments that oversaw settlement of those areas.  At present, a search for Texas newspapers, and even into early Texas History, brings up a wealth of primary source information about Texas after it entered the United States and about Texas in the Civil War, most of which is available in English-language newspapers.  We are very excited about the opportunity to expand the representation of Texas cultures in Chronicling America with the addition of Spanish- and German-language titles.

For more information about the National Digital Newspaper Program, you can visit the NEH NDNP page.