Torchbearer: Winter 1996

Old News To Go On-line

One of the Tennessee newspapers that will be catalogued and put on-line.

Talk about a combination of old and new! Imagine being able to use your personal computer to find a newspaper printed in 1800.

Thanks to the electronic age and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, you should be able to do just that in a few years.

The UTK Libraries have received a $250,000 NEH grant to locate, catalogue, preserve on microfilm, and index on-line Tennessee newspapers dating back to the 18th century.

The cataloging phase will take seven or eight years, says Dr. James Lloyd, special collections librarian at UTK's Hoskins Library.

"Theoretically you'll be able to find where the title is and if they have the particular volume and issue that you are interested in," Lloyd says.

Planning began in 1994 with a survey of Tennessee newspaper repositories. About 6,000 titles were located in 200 facilities. Half of those were published in Tennessee, according to Lloyd.

Cataloging of the largest collection in the state--at the Tennessee State Library and Archives--began last fall. The UTK libraries have the second-largest collection.

The Tennessee effort is part of a nationwide program to archive and preserve newspapers published in the U.S. from the 18th century to the present.