New York State Historic Newspapers

The NYS Historic Newspapers project provides free online access to a wide range of newspapers chosen to reflect New York’s unique history.

NYSHistoricNewspapers.org uses the CHRONAM software platform developed by the Library of Congress Newspaper Project to provide immediate free access to millions of newspaper pages published in New York State.  Researchers may search by city, county, date, title, and full text keywords.  Metadata includes MARC records, persistent URLs, consistent file names, ABBY OCR text files, and functional METS/ALTOS.

 

The following fees and guidelines apply to contributions made to nyshistoricnewspapers.org. Further questions should be directed to digitization@nnyln.org.

  1. Microfilm can be submitted to Northern New York Library Network for full-service digitizing. Fees for scanning, processing, OCRing, date-naming, ingesting, and hosting at nyshistoricnewspapers.org:
    • Members of an ESLN library council: $198 per microfilm reel
    • Non-members: $242 per microfilm reel
    • Resultant OCR date-named PDFs (searchable digital files) will be returned to contributor. Undated TIF images available upon request.
  2. Microfilm can be scanned by an outside agency. For inclusion on nyshistoricnewspapers.org, they must meet the Required File Specifications as listed below.
    • Fees for ingesting and hosting files digitized by an agency other than NNYLN:
      • Members of an ESLN library council: 1 cent per image
      • Non-members: 2 cents per image
    • PDF with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) already completed and embedded behind image
    • 400 DPI greyscale (300 DPI bitonal minimum)
    • 1 newspaper page (1-up not 2-up)
    • approximately 3:4 in size
    • no larger than 5000px wide
    • 8 bit color (greyscale) or less
    • named in the format: NewsaperTitle-YYYYMMDD-page# Example: nowheresville-gazette-18590621-001.pdf
    • file size no larger than 5 MB
    • If contributed files do not meet the above standards, adjustments will need to be made before the files will be accepted. If needed, the Northern New York Library Network can adjust the files to meet standards. Fees for adjusting files to comply with site standards:
      • Members of an ESLN library council: 4 cents per image
      • Non-members: 5 cents per image

    Please contact digitization@nnyln.org for a quote.

    If the title submitted includes papers outside the public domain, copyright clearance must be obtained. A Copyright Permission Form is available at https://nnyln.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/NYSHN-Permission-Agreement.pdf.

    If the newspaper title does not appear on Chronicling America, a MARC record will need to be provided.

    The Northern New York Library Network can digitize non-newspaper microfilm as well. Fees for digitizing microfilm other than newspapers:

    • Members of an ESLN library council: 12 cents per image
    • Non-members: 15 cents per image
    • Add OCR and/or date-naming processes:
      • +6 cents per image