The Texas Digital Newspaper Program is a partnership to provide broad geographic access to digitized Texas newspapers as far back as 1829. This is a very popular collection with some outstanding partners across Texas. Newspapers are being added to the Portal regularly. Some of the current titles include the Telegraph and Texas Register, the Bartlett Tribune, the Texas Ranger, the Palo Pinto Star, the Texas Democrat, the Lavaca Herald, and the Tulia Herald.

The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries is the lead institution in Texas selected for National Digital Newspaper Program, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. The National Digital Newspaper Program is a joint project by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LOC) to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers from 1690 to the present. During the next 20 years, NDNP will create a digital resource of historically significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 in all 50 states and U.S. territories. For the first phase of the grant, UNT delivered 100,000 pages of digitized newspapers to LOC, and UNT will also host the images, offering free and open access to them on the Portal to Texas History. UNT is now in the second two-year phase of this program.

The newspaper titles selected for the 2007-09 phase of the Chronicling America grant include papers between 1880-1910 from: the Houston Daily Post; the Jewish Herald (Houston); the Brownsville Daily Herald; the Fort Worth Gazette; the Palestine Daily Herald; the San Saba News; the Shiner Gazette; the Brenham Weekly Banner; the San Angelo Press; the Waco Evening News; the Waco Daily Examiner; the Greenville Morning Herald; and the Jefferson Jimplecute. The titles were selected by an Advisory Board coordinated by staff at the Center for American History at University of Texas partner for the grant.

While Chronicling America provides a great start for digitizing newspapers in Texas, due to the size of the state and staggering number of newspapers titles published in Texas, we are actively seeking to form partnerships with others to digitize newspaper titles beyond those selected for Chronicling America. Our goal is to create a digitized newspaper resource that covers a broad geographic area, and this will only be possible through cooperation and multiple funding sources.

Learn more about the Texas Digital Newspaper Program.