The Portal to Texas History at the GLO’s Save Texas History Symposium

Posted by & filed under General.

The Cathy Nelson Hartman Portal to Texas History Endowment was happy to sponsor and host a booth at the Save Texas History Symposium, From San Fernando de Bexar to “The Alamo City:” San Antonio and its History. The symposium was presented by the Texas General Land Office at the Historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio on September 22nd and 23rd and covered history of the San Antonio area from the 18th century to the early 20th century. We got to see many friends of the Portal and had the opportunity to make many more friends. 

National Endowment for the Humanities Awards UNT Libraries for a Seventh Round of the National Digital Newspaper Program

2023 NEH Award Icon

Posted by & filed under Featured, General, Grants, National Digital Newspaper Program, Texas Digital Newspaper Program.

Awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to UNT Libraries, a seventh grant round, awarded on 9/1/2023 in the amount of $203,140, will span two years and support addition of 100,000 more Texas newspaper pages to Chronicling America, the Library of Congress’ national repository for U.S. newspapers.  Texas will add titles from south- and border-Texas cities, including San Antonio, Laredo, and El Paso, with the goal of expanding more titles and years of newspapers that tell the stories of underrepresented Texans, supportive of bridging the communities in ways indicated by NEH Chair Shelly Lowe’s statements from the 2022 National Digital Newspaper Program Annual Meeting, as we endeavor to “balance difference of viewpoint, heritage, and include parallel and unknown histories in our narrative” (Lowe 2022).  

In addition to adding the newspapers to Chronicling America, where Texas identity can be preserved in the context of other state newspapers, we will also add these newspapers to  the Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP), on The Portal to Texas History. All of the newspapers available in Chronicling America and TDNP are freely accessible and can be used broadly for activities including research and education. As a result, we try continually to inform teachers and students about the importance of newspapers as windows into history.

Chronicling America is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress in an effort to build a nationwide, open-access repository of digitized historic newspapers.

To learn more about Chronicling America, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, visit their additional resources! 

 

 

University of North Texas Libraries Receives FY24 TexTreasures Award!

Posted by & filed under General, Grants, Texas Digital Newspaper Program, TexTreasures.

The TexTreasures Competitive Grant Program is awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through funds received from the Library Services and Technology Act. Drs. Ana Krahmer and Mark Phillips have received an FY24 TexTreasures grant of $39,998, to fill in newspaper gaps relating to the history of underrepresented Houston communities, including: 

  • The Houston Informer, the city’s African American paper, advocating for advancing the civil rights of both the Houston and wider southern African American community.  Currently, The Portal to Texas History hosts 100 issues from 1919 to 1924, and this grant will extend coverage up to 1931. 
  • The Jewish Herald-Voice, a Houston-based newspaper published for and by the Jewish community in Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast, currently is available up to 1979 on the Portal, and this grant will fund completion of the next 30 years, up to 2009. 
  • The South Belt-Ellington Leader, a newspaper published by women, self-described as “housewives,” (“Leader History”) living and working in the South Belt area. The Leader has served the community as a watchdog newspaper to protect citizen safety and health since 1976.  

TexTreasures is an annual competitive grant program designed to help member libraries make their special collections more accessible to researchers across Texas and beyond. For further information about this award and recipients, visit the TexTreasures Recipients page.

Texas State Library and Archives Commission Logo Institute of Museum and Library Services Logo Texas Digital Newspaper Program Collection Logo

 

Rescuing Texas History, 2023 Awards Announcement

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This past May, The Portal to Texas History announced its most recent call for submissions for the 2023 Rescuing Texas History program. This is the fifteenth year of the program, which has brought to light over 77,000 items from 438 projects. Since the beginning of the program there have been over 17 million uses of materials hosted on The Portal to Texas History that were received in response to past call for submissions.

Each selected project is provided with up to $1,000 of digitization services and the materials come from libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and other groups (including individuals) that house historical materials.

We are thrilled to announce this year’s awardees!
Congratulations to:

Badge of Pride, LLC History Committee of Clear Lake Shores Civic Club Remembering Black Dallas Private Collection of TB Willis
Private Collection of the Ritchie Family Bosque Museum Private Collection of Dr. Rudy Rodriguez Private Collection of Dr. George E Keaton, Jr.
Fort Worth Jewish Archives City of Galveston Brownsville Historical Association White Rock Chapel of Addison, Inc.
Private Collection of Jim Mahoney Tarrant County Archives Texarkana Museum System African American Library in Bell County
Mesquite Public Library Riesel Historical Society Cooke County Library Heritage Society at Sam Houston Park

 

 

Texas Digital Newspaper Program Reaches Huge Milestone!

10 Million Newspaper Pages

Posted by & filed under Featured, General, Texas Digital Newspaper Program.

On July 7, 2023, the Texas Digital Newspaper Program reached 10 million pages of newspapers. These are newspapers digitally preserved, freely accessible, and fully text-searchable in The Portal to Texas History, hosted by University of North Texas Libraries.

Who makes the Texas Digital Newspaper Program possible?

Encompassing 912,623 newspaper issues, the TDNP collection is built by partners from across Texas. The top three most contributing partners of newspapers, in order, are: The Texas Digital Newspaper Program collection represents a massive endeavor in preservation, digitization, and digital access to news content. Spanning over 200 years of history from or related to Texas and the South, TDNP includes newspapers in Spanish, German, Czech, Hebrew, Chinese, Italian, French, and Swedish, as well as one serial title in Esperanto. This past year, we have added newspaper titles from communities as small as 612 in population, as well as from big cities, including Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Galveston, among others. Additions of newspapers in TDNP have been made possible through generous support from multiple groups, including: In addition to these sponsors of digital newspaper preservation, partners from cities all over Texas have worked very hard to prepare their newspaper collections for preservation and digital access. A range of tasks go into digitizing a community newspaper, from grant-writing by partnering groups, rescuing newspapers from such places as high hurricane-risk locations, filing cabinets, hot and leaky barns, backs of trucks, or abandoned buildings, to name a few examples of how far contributors have gone to rescue newspapers. Many private individuals have helped their local public libraries prepare grant applications to fund building access to their community newspapers, saying things like, “Our community might not be here in 50 years, but I know our newspapers will be available and visible through The Portal to Texas History.” The ability of TDNP to guarantee long-term preservation and access in perpetuity is also possible because of The Cathy Nelson Hartman Portal to Texas History Endowment, which, “. . . enables UNT to extend the impact of the Portal by creating a permanent, sustainable source of income.”

Fun and Interesting Highlights

Searching for St. Antonio locates 1813 issues of the National Intelligencer, documenting the Mexican revolt from Spanish authority Searching for “St. Antonio” on the Portal locates 1813 issues of the National Intelligencer, documenting the Mexican revolt from Spanish authority, such as this June 10, 1813 clipping. The Representative, volume 1, number 1 This clipping from volume 1, number 1, highlights the mission of the first African American-owned and edited newspaper in Texas. Published by Richard Nelson, issues of The Representative available in the Texas Digital Newspaper Program span 1871-1872.
From the Rosenberg Library in Galveston, we have digitized multiple years of the Evening Tribune, and this weatherbird family has helped us with forecasts of the weather and how it will impact upcoming events in the city.
Weatherbird: I’m happy because I’m alive, from January 26, 1914. Weatherbird: It’s anything for style, from January 8, 1914.
Weatherbird, asking the sun to "have a heart!" Weatherbird, asking the sun to “have a heart!” in this July 15, 1915 issue. Weatherbird encourages suffrage, but it will be windy, according to this November 28, 1913 issue.