Frequently Asked Questions

The Illinois Newspaper Project identifies, preserves, digitizes and provides access to historical newspapers. In 1987, the INP began identifying Illinois newspapers and their holding locations, information now made accessible through the Illinois Newspaper Directory. On a project-basis, the INP performs preservation microfilming of original newspapers and digitization of microfilmed newspapers. The INP manages the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections (IDNC), a digital newspaper database available to anyone, anywhere, at no cost.

The INP can also help connect other cultural heritage organizations to digitization vendors, best practices and standards, and recommended workflows. If you have a digitized newspaper you wish to have included in the IDNC, we can assess the feasibility of inclusion (this is often dependent upon quality of digital imaging and metadata as well as time and resources).

The Illinois Newspaper Project is happy to consider your digitized newspapers for inclusion in the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections (IDNC). Please get in touch with us at idnc@library.illinois.edu.

We can help connect you to an external vendor. Please get in touch with us at idnc@library.illinois.edu.

We would be happy to discuss donation with you. Please contact us for a list of the newspapers we are interested in acquiring. If your item is not included in the list, we are unable to pay for its digitization, as we have established priorities for our digitization efforts. We would be happy to consult about costs of digitization and possible funding sources.  

You can conduct an advance search here (https://www.library.illinois.edu/inp/database_wp.php) by typing in the name of a newspaper or searching by city, county, or year. To widen your search, only fill out one of the fields. Filling in more boxes will narrow your search.

Thanks for the catch! We try to keep this updating, but it’s a lot of information. You can contact us at idnc@library.illinois.edu and we will update the directory. 

We will consider future opportunities to accept newspaper nominations, but these opportunities are dependent upon available funding, typically through state or federal grants.