ARCHIVE OF WISCONSIN NEWSPAPERS
The Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers, available through BadgerLink, provides digital access to some of Wisconsin’s historical newspapers. See the list of historical newspapers currently in the archive.
The Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers was a coordinated project of the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium (WPLC), Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS), Wisconsin Newspaper Association (WNA) and WiLS. As of Summer 2022, the coordinated effort to digitize and add new content to the Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers remains on hold. View a progress update, updated in winter 2023, for more details.
View this resource document shared by project managers in Spring 2022 to find:
- Alternative newspaper digitization options
- Ways to access existing collections of digitized Wisconsin newspapers
All of the historical newspaper content contributed to the Archive by Wisconsin libraries between 2015 and 2020 remains fully searchable through BadgerLink -- almost 600,000 pages from 40 different titles in 26 Wisconsin communities. Anyone with a Wisconsin library card can explore these historical newspapers by title, city, county or date, as well as more than 250 daily and weekly Wisconsin newspapers from 2005 to 90 days ago.
PROJECT BACKGROUND AND FUNDING
In 2015, WPLC undertook a pilot project to provide proof of concept for a centralized point of access to digitized historical newspapers from Wisconsin communities. WPLC partnered with the Wisconsin Historical Society, WiLS, and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association to select, reformat, and provide access to approximately 85,000 pages of historical newspapers from 12 communities across the state. Funding for the pilot project was provided by WPLC as well as Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds awarded to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
A review of the pilot and recommendations for next steps in the project were presented to the WPLC board at their February 2016 meeting. Since then, several large batches of content have been scanned from microfilm by Wisconsin Historical Society and loaded to the Archive by the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. The costs for this work have been contributed by individual Wisconsin libraries and supplemented by additional LSTA funds distributed by DPI.
An LSTA grant from 2019 supported the creation of METS/ALTO metadata files for scanned newspaper pages by a third-party vendor, Digital Divide Data (DDD), converting existing content into a more interoperable and standardized form.
WPLC’s role in the project is governed by the Historical and Local Digital Collections Committee.
QUESTIONS?
Please email wplc-info@wils.org with any questions about this project.