The Southeastern NY Library Resources Council is pleased to announce the launch of a new website, HRVH Historical Newspapers http://news.hrvh.org/, part of the Hudson River Valley Heritage (HRVH) service. The Kingston Daily Freeman is the first newspaper to be included in this new digital newspaper repository and was completely digitized for the years 1903 to 1912.

The entire contents of the newspaper issues can be searched by word and browsed by date. Complete issues of the newspaper can be viewed by full page or individual articles can be highlighted and viewed. This collection will be invaluable to historians, family researchers, teachers and students.

HRVH Historical Newspapers is the product of a two year demonstration project supported in part by Federal Library Services and Technology Act funds, awarded to the New York State Library by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. Using this grant and other New York State funds, SENYLRC created images and digitized 2,974 issues and 26,341 pages of The Kingston Daily Freeman from microfilm and print issues of the newspaper. The Kingston Library supplied copies of the microfilm and the City of Kingston Historian provided 106 year old print copies of the newspaper for this project.

HRVH Historical Newspapers is freely available for public use. Our goal is to have the newspaper site linked from as many library websites and portals as possible so that people know that this resource is available for them to use for their research. If you could find a place on your website for a link to http://news.hrvh.org/, we’d certainly appreciate it.

The vision for HRVH Historical Newspapers is to provide access to digitized copies of historical newspapers from the Hudson River Valley region of New York State. New titles added to HRVH Historical Newspapers will be based on a number of factors, such as regional significance, the availability of paper issues or master negative microfilm copies of the newspaper, and available funds.

Feel free to share this information with the staff at your library. If you have questions or comments about the site, please email me <killian@senylrc.org> and I will be happy to reply.

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Hudson River Valley Heritage (HRVH) is an award-winning collaborative initiative between the Southeastern NY Library Resources Council (SENYLRC) and libraries, historical societies, museums and other cultural organizations in the Hudson River Valley Region – Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Ulster, Sullivan Rockland, Orange and Putnam Counties of New York State. At http://www.hrvh.org/, researchers, students, instructors and website searchers have free, 24/7 access to the online collections of digitized historical materials – photos, postcards, letters, newspapers, diaries, scrapbooks, manuscripts, memorabilia, maps, ephemera, and audio and video clips – about the Hudson River Valley Region. The digital repository is administered and hosted by SENYLRC. HRVH funding comes from federal funds, New York State funding for library systems, special grants and annual membership dues.

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The Southeastern NY Library Resources Council (SENYLRC), chartered by the NY State Board of Regents in 1967, is one of nine state-funded regional library consortia. SENYLRC’s mission is to support its members in the Mid-Hudson Valley in order to enrich their services and enhance access to information for their users. Located in Highland, NY, SENYLRC services target over 100 member institutions, including all types of libraries and cultural heritage organizations. Through recent initiatives like HRVH, SENYLRC demonstrates its value to other institutions considering membership. Visit SENYLRC at http://www.senylrc.org/.