OCLC selected to digitize historical California newspapers

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA,  22 June 2006 —OCLC Online Computer Library Center has been selected by the University of California, Riverside (UCR) to digitize historical California newspapers.

UCR was one of six organizations to be awarded a National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2005.  NEH awards a series of grants to one organization within each U.S. state or territory to collaborate with relevant partners in support of the NDNP, a joint venture of the NEH and the Library of Congress to create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all U.S. states and territories published between 1836 and 1922. 

The University of California, Riverside has selected the San Francisco Call for digitization.  The San Francisco Call is one of the most significant newspapers published in California between 1900 and 1910, and was San Francisco’s leading morning newspaper for several decades.  The Los Angeles Herald and several smaller regional papers are currently under consideration for digitization. 

"It's very exciting that these important California newspapers will soon be freely available online," said Andrea Vanek, Assistant Director, California Newspaper Project, University of California, Riverside.  "OCLC is a great partner on this project.  Their staff has been wonderful to work with.  Their expertise in newspaper digitization and their understanding of the complex issues involved in this national program have proven to be great assets on this project." 

OCLC's Preservation Service Centers will complete the digitization of 100,000 newspaper pages in 2007.  OCLC uses docWORKS Newspaper Edition Software, an intelligent software application that was developed by CCS GmbH, a global company based in Hamburg, Germany.  The docWORKS version being used is based on NDNP specifications.  It meets all current NDNP requirements and will be updated regularly to meet all future specifications.  OCLC has been involved in newspaper digitization projects since the early 1990s, and has scanned more than 2 million newspaper pages using the latest technology at its state-of-the-art facilities.

"We are thrilled to be selected by University of California, Riverside to digitize noteworthy California newspapers," said Debra Spruill, Director, OCLC Preservation Service Centers.  "The National Digital Newspaper Program is a vital initiative dedicated to the preservation of one of our nation's finest primary resources of historical information." 

As the newspapers are digitized, they will be added to a searchable database maintained at the Library of Congress, and be freely accessible to the public via the Internet at http://www.loc.gov/ndnp. 

Once newspapers become digitized, there are a variety of tools available to help organizations manage their digitized newspaper collections.  CONTENTdm, distributed by OCLC, is a tool used by hundreds of libraries and other institutions to manage thousands of digital collections.  CONTENTdm offers a complete newspaper presentation system that includes NDNP data format compliance, customizable interfaces, full-text searching, highlighted search word hits, printable PDF versions, an electronic article clipper and more. 

The NDNP builds on the foundation established by an earlier NEH initiative:  the U.S. Newspaper Program (USNP), begun in 1982.  A collaborative project among the states and federal government, the USNP aimed to preserve (on microfilm) newspapers published in the United States from the 18th century to the present.  The NDNP continues the work of the USNP by making available online a digital resource of U.S. newspapers from the 19th century to the present.  For the USNP project, OCLC was selected to maintain the national newspaper directory of bibliographic and holdings information in WorldCat, the world's largest bibliographic database of items held in libraries. 

For more information about the NDNP, visit http://www.neh.gov/projects/ndnp.html.

For more information about the USNP, visit http://www.neh.gov/projects/usnp.html.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit organization that has provided computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing, eContent and preservation services to 54,000 libraries in 109 countries and territories.  OCLC and its member libraries worldwide have created and maintain WorldCat, the world's richest online resource for finding library materials.  For more information, visit www.oclc.org.

About DiMeMa Inc.
DiMeMa Inc. (Digital Media Management) develops CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software and supports the rapidly growing community of CONTENTdm users.  DiMeMa's corporate objective is to provide leading software tools for digital collection management.  Using the latest technology integrated with input from information professionals, DiMeMa continues to evolve these tools to provide easy-to-use, reliable, flexible and high performance applications specifically targeted for media management and archiving.  For more information, visit www.dimema.com.

About CCS GmbH
CCS, Content Conversion Specialists, formed in 1976, is a software and technology development company, and also provides consultation and digitization services.  For CCS, content conversion means harvesting textual and structural data out of digital images in order to provide access to information formerly stored on microfilm or paper.  CCS focuses on materials like newspapers, journals, scientific reports and books.  CCS technology is used by universities and digitization centers throughout the United States and Europe.  For more information, visit
www.ccs-gmbh.de/index_e.html.

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