If you would like to add new titles and/or pages to the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, the process is simple:
- Contact us and let us know the title or region that interests you. We can help you identify what papers were published in a given county, and what is available on microfilm for digitization. Unfortunately, not all newspapers were saved through the years. Some titles are available on microfilm or in hard copy (print), others are not.
- You select which title or titles you want us to evaluate.
- We conduct an assessment of the available microfilm. We look for quality and filming issues, including who owns the rights to the microfilm, how well were the newspapers filmed, and the number of pages contained on each reel of microfilm.
- Once we have evaluated the reels, we put together a cost estimate for you. Costs for digitization cover the actual costs of processing the pages. The CHNC is a nonprofit service. The charges associated with adding a newspaper to the CHNC are one-time only. The Colorado State Library assumes responsibility for all continuing costs, which include server hardware, system software, support personnel, maintenance, upgrades, and associated technology costs. We will not charge you any additional fees, subscriptions, or other costs after your project is complete.
- From the cost estimate, you decide how or if you want to proceed. This is a long-term service and we understand that fund-raising efforts can take many years. Once you are ready to proceed, you decide how many reels you want to digitize and we issue you an invoice for those reels/pages only.
Once payment has been received:
- If necessary, papers are delivered to a vendor for filming and master-negative creation.
- Master negatives are copied for preservation purposes, and the copies are scanned into TIF files.
- The TIF files are shipped to our data processors for article segmentation, OCR creation and METS/ALTO output.
- Once completed, the original TIF files along with the additional output files are sent from the vendor to the CHNC support staff.
- We upload the data to our servers, index the data, and make the papers/pages available from the CHNC service. The digitization process is very hands on and labor intensive, and can take 3-4 months for completion. CHNC staff will keep you posted as your pages move through the process.