JULY 2000

Volume 2 Number 3

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New Grant for Connecticut Newspaper Project

Laura Moulton, Project Librarian

The Connecticut Newspaper Project (CNP) is pleased to announce that we have received additional grant funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue preservation microfilming. The new grant will run from 2000 to 2002, and will bring the total number of pages filmed by the CNP to just over one million.

One of the priorities of the CNP is to complete filming for titles that we have already borrowed as soon as possible. The CNP will begin shipping titles ready to be filmed as soon as there is a new contract in place. The first group to be filmed for filming under the new grant is the Manchester Evening Herald.. This is a rather large family which will total over 100 reels of film when it is complete. A few other titles at the top of our filming list include the Bridgeport Evening Farmer, the Tri-weekly Standard (also of Bridgeport), and Que Pasa, a smaller, more recent ethnic paper that was published in Hartford. These are just a few of the titles that the CNP has been preparing for filming during the last few months while waiting patiently to hear that our funding had been renewed.

One of the newspapers filmed under the grant, which is just ending, should be of particular interest to many people, and local historians especially. The Herald of Freedom was published by P.T. Barnum in the early 1830's. This newspaper was a real challenge for the CNP to collect and preserve on microfilm. Issues for the Herald of Freedom were borrowed from one out of state and three in state institutions including the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport which has the largest known collection of issues for this title known to date. Almost all known and available issues for the Herald of Freedom are now on film. This was a real challenge for the CNP. The Herald of Freedom will now be available to a much broader group of researchers.

Also filmed under the grant just ending was the New Britain Herald, which includes 192, reels of film, and contains over 100,000 pages of newsprint. The last family of newspapers being completed under this grant is the Hartford Post family. The Hartford Post is another large family, which will consist of 209 reels of film and contain additional 100,000 pages of newsprint. A list of newspaper titles that were converted to microfilm under the 1998-2000 grant is being prepared and will be updated as we complete more film.

Even with our effort and the efforts of other Connecticut projects, there are still an estimated 2.75 million pages that need preservation on film. Local libraries and historical societies will have to get involved to help save Connecticut's newspapers before they are lost forever. For more information on the importance of microfilming check out CNP. If you have questions on how to get a local microfilming project started, contact Laura J. Moulton, CNP Project Librarian, at 860-757-6527.

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