HOW DOES IT WORK?  

• Select the newspaper(s) and dates for digitization 

• Request a project estimate from Oregon Digital Newspaper Program (ODNP) Program Manager Elizabeth Peterson (emp@uoregon.edu) 

• Secure funding for the project –> Learn more about fundraising

• Sign a Memorandum of Understanding with UO Libraries  

• ODNP staff digitizes the newspaper(s), usually from our own microfilm negatives 

• Digitized issues appear online in Historic Oregon Newspapers

WHAT DOES IT COST? 

ODNP operates on a cost-recovery model. We partner with local organizations and individuals to fund the cost of digitization. Sponsoring partners select the newspapers to digitize and supply funding for the projects—usually via grants or fundraising. 

• Microfilm: $0.75 per page (as of July 1, 2025)

• Newsprint: $0.85 per page 

These costs cover the entire digitization process from start to finish: project estimates, copyright research, scanning, cropping images, putting images into folders by issue and date, running each page through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to ensure keyword searchability, adding metadata to every page image, doing quality checks throughout, hosting the issues in our free online database, and providing long-term digital preservation of the page images on University of Oregon servers.  

–> Learn more about fundraising

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?

Projects generally take 9-18 months to complete, depending on the size of the project. 

WHAT SOURCE MATERIAL DO YOU USE TO DIGITIZE? 

The UO Libraries has an extensive collection of Oregon newspapers on microfilm, so we can usually digitize titles from our own holdings. We also borrow original newsprint issues from partner organizations. 

CONTACT US!

Please contact us if you’d like to sponsor a project, get a project estimate, or recommend titles for digitization.

If there is a specific newspaper title or geographical location you would like to see included in Historic Oregon Newspapers, we encourage you to consider working with a local library or historical society, or forming a group with other like-minded researchers, to fund a digitization project for newspapers from your area.

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