OUR STORY Personal Accounts from the Central Pennsylvania Field Office Staff US Newspaper Project 1985-1988

Project TIMELINE: 1983 – 1990, 1991

The purpose of this timeline is to highlight significant happenings and important decision points of the statewide Pennsylvania Newspaper Project (PaNP) for the period 1983 to 1990. Post-project activities for 1991 are also included to show the continuation of the microfilming phase beyond the PaNP. The Project officially began in 1983 with a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) planning grant. By 1984, Pennsylvania received its first NEH United States Newspaper Program (USNP) grant to catalog newspaper holdings found in each of the states’ 67 counties. Four regional cataloging sites were established makingPennsylvania one of the first large states participating in the USNP, the first state to be divided into geographic regions to carry out the work, and the first to conduct field work. The cataloging phase began in 1985 at each of the four regional sites, and by 1987 the microfilming phase of the Project was underway. The statewide Project concluded its work in December 1990 when the microfilming phase ended. Throughout the life of the Project the lack of funding, securing the required NEH matching funds, plagued the project resulting in fewer titles and holdings being filmed. However, with NEH funds, Pennsylvania was able to locate and catalog 7,921 titles, many of which were previously unknown, and to preserve on microfilm 3 million newspaper pages.