The Equinox Resort & Spa, home to the conference this year, boosts a 200 year history, 6 different architectural styles, and 17 structures–it’s quite the complex!
The Vermont Digital Newspaper Project (VTDNP) was invited to give a workshop to teachers at this year’s Vermont Alliance for the Social Studies Conference in Manchester, Vermont, at the Equinox Resort & Spa, on Friday, December 5, 2014.
It’s been a busy week for VTDNP crew. On Monday, October 20, 2014, our project librarian, Erenst Anip presented at the New England Library Association (NELA) Annual Conference in Boxborough, MA (about an hour drive from Boston). There, he co-presented with Gail Hurley from the Connecticut Digital Newspaper Project (CTDNP) on NDNP to spread the word about Chronicling America to the wider New England area and hopefully other neighboring states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine will join NDNP soon. Gail presented on an overview of NDNP grant and Erenst talked about the details of the grant.
Today, October 14, 2014, marks another milestone for our project. All of the digitized newspaper pages from phase 2 are now accessible on Chronicling America, all 254,253 of them along with 15 newspaper title essays (more to come!). The last batch consist of Orleans County Monitor issues from 1908-1922.
As part of the NDNP requirement, we will send all of the duplicate negative microfilm reels of the newspaper digitized to Library of Congress for preservation and safe keeping. Here’s what it looks like before it gets packed and shipped to LC’s vault:
Now, onward with phase 3 and adding more Vermont historic content to the Internet!
It was a busy week in Washington for Erenst and me at the ninth annual meeting of the National Digital Newspaper Program, September 15-18. The long days of meetings, discussions, and presentations seemed to fly by as we learned about what other state projects are doing and what’s new with our sponsors, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
My week started early on Monday with a “Beyond NDNP” pre-conference at the Willard Hotel. Attended by about fifty current and former (alumni) state project staffers from around the country, this day-and-a-half gathering was funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Its purpose was to see whether those who are digitizing newspapers outside of NDNP could agree on standards and protocols, as well as explore strategies for preservation and sustainability. There was a lively discussion of standards, page vs. article-level access, costs, and funding sources. Tuesday morning’s session (which Erenst attended) focused on sustainability. I learned a great deal and will attempt to share some of that knowledge in a future post. Meanwhile, Eden Robins from the Arizona project also wrote a blog post on “Beyond NDNP’ and more, with group photo!
Photo: Erenst & Jeff in front of the Madison Building after Day 2 of National Digital Newspaper Program Annual Conference.
Seven Days reporter, Ethan de Seife, visited VTDNP office early in December 2014 and interviewed our staff members. Here’s the article published both print and digital copy: For Future Reference: Librarians Are Digitizing Vermont’s Past.
Now, onward with phase 3 and adding more Vermont historic content to the Internet!
