CHNC Reaches Millionth Page Milestone

Growth of Database Causes Great Excitement.  New Titles Added – More Counties Represented.

DENVER COLORADO.  August 13, 2017 — Although careful planning and hard work have brought them to this place, the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (CHNC) Team rejoiced as they added the one millionth digitized page of historic Colorado newspaper content to their free online database.  The Team – lead by Leigh Jeremias, and enlisting the manpower of digitization specialists spanning three continents, reached this mammoth milestone in the service’s 14th year of existence  – and have never been prouder.

The auspicious millionth page came from the Montrose Daily Press, Volume XII, Number 247, April 21, 1921, which is part of a digitization project supported by Montrose Regional Library District.

In the past two years, the database has grown by over 350,000 pages of digitized newspapers, thanks to the efforts of our partner organizations – the archives, libraries, museums, historical societies, genealogical societies, and private individuals within the state.  They have provided the funding to digitize the microfilm or hard copy newspapers near and dear to their hearts, thus helping to preserve the unique voice of their local communities.  Without their efforts, we could never have achieved this outstanding result.

In November of 2015, the CHNC underwent a face lift and platform change, incorporating more functionality and engagement features into the interface that not only allowed for better searching and discovery, but promoted crowd sourcing OCR (Optical Character Recognition) correction and community sharing.  We believe that this new interface, provided by our partner Veridian, has a lot to do with the surge in new content as well.

The Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection began as a grant funded project in 2003. With the initial grant funding, roughly 97,000 pages of historic Colorado newspapers were digitized and hosted online in a database specifically designed for the purpose.  It has been a long journey to reach our current status, but it was a labor of love, and we look forward to adding the next million pages to be shared with Colorado residents, teachers, students, researchers, and the world.

To learn more about the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, visit our website at http://coloradohistoricnewspapers.org.  To learn how you can get involved, contact Leigh Jeremias at ljeremias@coloradovirtuallibrary.org.