Today is the last day in our holiday series: The 12 Days of NCDHC. Each day we’ve posted short entries that reveal something you may not know about us. You can view all of the posts together by clicking on the 12daysofncdhc tag. And, as always, chat with us if you have questions or want to work with us on something new. Happy Holidays!

Day 12: Your Organization Can Fund Additional Microfilmed Newspaper Digitization

Today we are sharing an exciting newspaper announcement! Each year we offer a limited amount of microfilmed newspaper digitization funded by the State Library of North Carolina through IMLS’ LSTA program. In the fall we issue a call for title nominations, and we receive many. Because we serve the entire state, we geographically spread around our efforts. This means that we are rarely able to do an entire run of a community newspaper, which can be frustrating for researchers and our partners. 

Last June our Advisory Board approved a pilot project where NCDHC partner institutions can pay for additional microfilmed newspaper digitization. We’ve done this with two partners successfully so we are opening up this pilot project more broadly. Here are some details:

• To participate your organization must be eligible to become an NCDHC partner.
• This project only includes North Carolina newspapers on microfilm. That can either be microfilm your institution is able to lend and/or microfilm available in the collection here at UNC Chapel Hill (you can search the catalog for holdings). If it’s something you’re lending, just know that it may be off site for as much as 6 months.
• We don’t have a limit on how much we can do and there’s no nomination to submit. If the request is large, we may have to complete it in batches.
• If we haven’t worked on the newspaper before we’ll have to have permission from the current rights holders or you’ll need to complete a copyright review. We can talk further about this; just contact us.
• During this pilot we are asking you to pay exactly the same amount the vendor charges us. Your organization would not need to pay for the ongoing hosting on DigitalNC.org or our staff time and effort, all of which is jointly covered by UNC Chapel Hill and the State Library. 
• The cost is currently $0.25 per page, which covers the necessary images and markup. The only other cost is for shipping the film to and from the vendor. We usually estimate between 800-1200 pages on a microfilm reel, though that can vary widely. 

A note about cost – we know that there are companies or individuals scanning microfilm that charge less. Our cost includes a specific type of markup in order to make the newspapers full-text searchable on our website.  If you do decide to go with a cheaper option elsewhere, still consider giving us a call. We can share some questions to ask the vendor to make sure you get your money’s worth and end up with a usable product.

We’re really happy to help accommodate additional demand. We aren’t discontinuing our other newspaper digitization efforts – we plan to continue issuing the call for nominations each fall, and we will continue to scan print student newspapers and very limited runs of community papers. But if seeing your community’s newspapers online is a priority and you’re interested in pursuing this funded option, get in touch!