RESEARCH General History

NEWSPAPERS
Grant allows Library to identify, save historical newspapers

Andrea Lynn, Humanities & Social Sciences Editor
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu

5/1/03

Photo by Bill Wiegand Newspaper Librarian Sharon Clark, left, and Rene Erlandson, INP senior cataloger, hold part of the vast collection of the library's historical newspapers.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Illinois Newspaper Project (INP) is both finding and making news.

Based at the Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and part of the Library of Congress-affiliated U.S. Newspaper Program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the project has received another NEH grant that will allow it to continue to identify and preserve portions of Illinois’ historical record – specifically, Illinois newspapers published from before statehood to the present.

The 2003-2005 NEH grant of $542,775 will support the INP’s work in 30 more counties in Illinois, allowing project staff to inventory and catalog newspaper collections in the western part of the state. Previous NEH grants supported work with 142 collections in 14 Illinois counties in Central Illinois.

According to Rene Erlandson, INP senior cataloger, the cultural heritage of Illinois is represented in thousands of general and ethnic-focused newspapers published in the state since 1814. Eventually, project staff will preserve many of the inventoried and cataloged newspapers on microfilm, giving "researchers across the country access to materials previously only available locally," she said.

The INP has turned up fascinating facts about the press in Illinois, for example, the state’s second paper was the Illinois Emigrant; the great Chicago fire of 1871 burned out every newspaper in town, but all of the dailies reappeared on small sheets within 48 hours; in 1880, Illinois’ population of 3 million was served by more than 1,000 papers; the state’s 13 million people currently have 689 newspapers.

To date, the university has received more than $1.5 million from NEH to support the work of the INP. The INP has completed work with more than 8,000 newspaper titles, nearly 2,000 of which are held at Illinois’ Newspaper Library. That library is the largest library of its kind anywhere.

Sharon Clark, head of the Newspaper Library and INP principal investigator, said her library holds more than 12,000 bound volumes, 110,000 microfilm reels, 8,000 microfilm cards and subscriptions to more than 400 U.S. and international papers, totaling more than 150 million newspaper pages dating from 1632.

The collection, Clark said, represents "a broad spectrum of political and philosophical views." It includes at least one daily paper from most major metropolitan areas of the United States, plus current subscriptions to black and Native American newspapers, undergraduate college dailies, the "alternative" and "underground" presses, religious titles and political, labor, literary and special interest titles.

Located for years in the basement of the Library building, the Newspaper Library has now moved up to the second floor where it will provide "better, more effective access to our collections and offer faculty, students and visitors a pleasant, high-tech space for their research," Clark said.