University of North Texas announced it has received a $19,915 grant to digitize all copies of Dallas Voice from its inception in 1984 through 1999.
Copies of the paper from March 2004 through the current issue are already available on the UNT web portal.
Dreanna Belden, assistant dean for external relations, said $7,200 more is needed “to close the gap.” The grant is from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Digitizing begins on Sept. 1 and must be completed by next August.
Belden said the paper would be digitized from original paper copies to create high-quality, searchable documents online. The copies currently available get high usage compared to the overall collection, Belden said.
UNT collects newspapers from around Texas. Last week the library celebrated 2 million pages of Texas newspapers online. Another half million pages should be available by November.
“In 2013, across the entire newspaper collection, issues on the Portal averaged 15.54 uses for every single issue,” she said. “In 2013, the Dallas Voice experienced an average use per issue of 58.22 uses per issue which is much higher than statistics for the rest of the collection.”
So Dallas Voice issues were used four times as often as the entire historic newspaper collection.
