A Retiree Digitizes 27 Million Old Newspaper Pages in His Livingroom (and Libraries Fight to Catch Up)

Last March, I profiled Tom Tryniski, an eccentric retiree who
has digitized (so far) about 27 million newspaper pages working
alone in his living room and has made them free for anyone to search. (Click
above to watch the video or
click
here to read the article.) The story offered an example of
Tryniski’s prowess: In 2003, the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL)
spent $400,000 digitizing the first 62 years of the Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, which was among the most widely read and
influential papers in 19th century America. A decade later, the
library was still raising money to finish
the remaining 52 years of the Daily Eagle‘s
run. In the meantime, Tryniski digitized all 115 years of the paper
in about five months working alone.

The BPL has caught up. The entire run of the paper is now
digitized and the library just launched a beautiful new
portal that makes it easy to search. The BPL Daily
Eagle site is far more limited than Tryniski’s—he’s digitized 639
newspapers including several other Brooklyn titles—but it’s quite a
bit faster and easier to use. 

So how much did the BPL pay to finish the job?
Absolutely nothing.

Here’s how the deal worked: Newspapers.com, which is a
subsidiary of the genealogy-titan Ancestry.com, runs
a subscription-based newspaper site that allows users to search
nearly 69 million newspaper pages. The company, which has a highly
evolved workflow for digitizing microfilm, agreed to complete the
Daily Eagle job at no charge and provide the
BPL with a free portal. In exchange, Newspapers.com got to include
the paper in its own subscription-based site. Patrons of
Newspapers.com have the advantage of searching over 3,000 titles
(including the Daily Eagle) with just one click; BPL’s
patrons get to search just the Daily Eagle, but
there’s no subscription required. If only media companies could
come up with such an elegant arrangement for monetizing and giving
away the very same content.

Brian Hansen, Newspapers.com’s general manager, told me that his
team is actively pursuing similar deals with newspaper publishers,
historical societies, and regional libraries all over the country.
Already, Newpapers.com is doing free digitizing for the Texas’ Hood
County News, the Kansas Historical Society, and the University of
North Carolina. Its competitor, NewspaperArchive.com, has adopted
the same strategy; last month, it offered to digitize the
Wilson Daily Times (North Carolina) at no cost in
exchange for permission to included the paper in its own
database.

Libraries and historical societies can also apply
for grants through the National
Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), which is run by the Library
of Congress and financed through the National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH). But working through the NDNP is slow and
expensive for taxpayers. The NEH awards come to about $300,000 per
title, and as of last year the agency had given away about $22
million for newspaper digization. As I reported in
my original story, the NDNP’s “high technical standards” drive
up costs in ways that don’t improve the experiences of researchers.
By working with a company liked Newspapers.com, libraries can get
their titles online quickly and at no cost. Or they can work with
Tryniski, whose site offers users the ability to search more than
just one title at a time just like the subscription sites. As long
as they don’t mind the occassional live stream of squirrels eating
corn in Tryniski’s backyard. Or the occassional spider walking
across the screen with Tryniski’s head grafted on top.

Want to know more about your great grandparents? Allegedly, one
in seven Americans can trace their ancestry back to Brooklyn. Give
the wonderful
new Daily Eagle site a whirl.