Share All About It: Facilitating Partnership-centered Newspaper Digitization Projects

Abstract

The Illinois Newspaper Project has existed in some form for nearly four decades and has evolved through project locations, staffing, and areas of focus. Collaborative efforts of the project have depended on the phase of work, staff levels, and institutional resources, and were strong in the project’s early years but slowed down between 2011-2023. Most recently, as an homage to the project’s early collaborative roots and supported by the institutional resources of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U. of I.), the INP has been well-equipped to serve as a state resource for newspaper preservation and digitization in alliance with the University’s land grant mission. The INP has built partnerships with cultural heritage institutions across the state to preserve and provide freely available access to Illinois historical newspapers through its digital newspaper platform, the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections (IDNC). Keywords: partnership; digitization projects; historical newspapers; digital preservation; digital collections