1988

January

See 1988 (January through February) Monthly Reports generated by the Penn State Project staff for details on their cataloging accomplishments, statistics and discoveries. The cataloging work would be completed for their 30 county-assignment.

University of Pittsburgh Project staff expanded their field work to inventory and catalog newspapers held in 10 remaining northwestern Pennsylvania counties. These counties included:

Erie, Crawford, Mercer, Warren, Venango, Forest, Clarion, Elk, McKean, Cameron

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Project staff began inventorying and cataloging newspapers held in their assigned 5-county territory – Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties. In addition, the Historical Society Project staff planned to inventory major newspaper collections in Philadelphia including the American Philosophical Society, the Presbyterian Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, the German Society of Pennsylvania and the Schwenkfelder Library. It was anticipated that it would require all of 1988 and 1989 to complete this assignment.

As of January 23, 108 newspaper titles from 17 counties had been or were in the process of being microfilmed.

February

Assistant Dean Jim Neal at Penn State University Libraries took the initiative to write to the leadership in the Pennsylvania General Assembly urging an appropriation, on behalf of an ad hoc committee which the State Library convened to assist the Project in developing an application to NEH for funds to start a statewide program in public awareness, continuing education, and planning for library materials preservation.

The Penn State University’s formal participation on the Pennsylvania Newspaper Project ended on February 26.

Project microfilming vendor MATCO/ROMCOR of Camp Hill, PA started filming titles for the Project. First titles filmed were those from Juniata and Snyder Counties.

June

The Technical Committee met in Pittsburgh on June 9 and heard progress reports from the cataloging sites, selected titles for microfilming from several western Pennsylvania counties and reviewed funding strategies for the microfilming program. David Hoffman reported that he had sent out 65 letters to private foundations seeking additional funding for the microfilming phase.

Microfilming turn-around time was 12 -16 weeks. Project staff were advised to inform repositories that filming would take 4 months.

Repositories were found to be unwilling to have bound newspaper volumes disbound for microfilming. MATCO/ROMCOR reported that it took 3X longer to film bound volumes than unbound volumes.

Microfilming Coordinator Bill Hamill recommended at the Project film titles after 1890 since Readex agreed to film earlier titles.

Cumulative statistics for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Project entries in the OCLC database, from the beginning of the Project through June 1988 were:

Counties completed: 43

New Records created: 4,360

New LDRs created: 22,746

These figures represented workforms which had final CONSER authentication at the University of Pittsburgh.

September

State Library staff (not paid from the Project) continued to enter holdings records of the State Library’s microfilm service positives and master negatives into OCLC, and updated records and holdings sent in from repositories.

October

The microfilming vendor continued to meet project requirements for quality and speed of filming. Camera work was reported at the rate of 5,000 frames per day.

Surprisingly, the Project found that owners of newspapers picked up for filming were asking for their papers to be returned after filming. The Project had anticipated that most owners would authorize disposal of their papers once they were filmed.

November

Cumulative statistics for Pennsylvania Newspaper Project entries in the OCLC database, from the beginning of the Project through November 1988 were:

Counties completed: 45

New Records created: 4,865

New LDRs created: 24,832

These figures represented workforms which had final CONSER authentication at the University of Pittsburgh.

December

Letters were sent to selected national celebrities who were born in counties whose papers were being selected for microfilming in the hopes they would support the Project. To date, only one such request yielded a $50 contribution.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission allocated $12,000 for the microfilming phase.

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