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How do I know that my children’s second Great Grandfather was a constable in San Jose for many years? How do I know that he rode all over the Bay Area searching for outlaws? How do I know he left to be a prospector and came back?
The California Digital Newspaper Collection (https://cdnc.ucr.edu/).
And now it’s at risk.
Here at CGS we urge you to do the following:
• Write to your State Assembly Person and State Senator (https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/)
• Write to the UC Riverside chancellor: [email protected]
• Donate to the CDNC: https://www.givecampus.com/campaigns/61710/donations/
Please give if you can. The future of the CDNC depends on it.
From their site:
The California Digital Newspaper Collection is a growing repository of historical California newspapers published from 1846-present, including the first California newspaper, the Californian, and the first daily California newspaper, the Daily Alta California. It also contains issues of current California newspapers, collected as PDFs, that are part of a project to preserve and provide access to contemporary papers.
They also note:
The CDNC has two main objectives. It provides access to digitized California newspapers and it also archives the digital files of those newspapers for posterity. That archive is immense: thousands terabytes of data and growing. All this data is being preserved onsite on servers and on tape backups. Managing and safekeeping this archive requires a substantial investment in hardware and personnel.
The history of this collection has a really great tie-in to our California Genealogical Society and in writing this, I really wish I had taken opportunities to meet Dr. Henry L. Snyder. Dr. Snyder was the Director of the California Newspaper Project (known as the California Digital Newspaper Collection).
He was instrumental in the identification, description and preservation of California newspapers through the 1990s and 2000 he and his staff visited over 1,400 newspaper repositories through the State, finding over 9,000 newspapers to preserve. When he retired in 2009, our Jane Lindsey gave him a tour of the library and he immediately became the Library Director and then from 2012 until his death in 2016, he was on the Board of Directors.
The California Digital Newspaper collection contains almost 1.5 million newspaper issues. There are over 21 million pages and 53 million articles. This project is the baby of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research at the University of California, Riverside. It is supported by funding administered by the California State Library and provided by the State of California.
Now it’s in jeopardy due to State budget cuts.
The site may be closed in a matter of WEEKS, due to state budget cuts. In January, the CDNC director was notified halfway through the fiscal year that his budget was cut to zero. Zero dollars to spend after spending half of the year. Not only will it close, but it will close in debt. All those newspapers shut off from our access and no further newspapers digitized, archived, or preserved.
“The annual appropriation from the state is $430,000…We didn’t receive any of it this fiscal year, which runs from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. UCR has continued to pay expenses, mainly salaries, this entire year,” expecting to be reimbursed by the State. He needs to raise at least $300,000 to cover the deficit.
What can we do? As genealogists we have a duty to protect family history and newspapers are a huge part of finding our ancestors. They tell us what our family was doing during those times—sometimes even laying out a long court battle in mini-bits over the death of a family patriarch (stay tuned for more on this next week!).
Here at CGS we urge you to do the following:
• Write to your State Assembly Person and State Senator (https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/)
• Write to the UC Riverside chancellor: [email protected]
• Donate to the CDNC: https://www.givecampus.com/campaigns/61710/donations/
Please give if you can. The future of the CDNC depends on it.
This entire blog post is Courtesy of the California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside, http://cdnc.ucr.edu.
Helpful Links
Events: https://www.californiaancestors.org/events-and-education/
Special Interest Groups: https://www.californiaancestors.org/special-interest-groups-for-members/
Calendar view: https://www.californiaancestors.org/cgs_calendar/
Tips & Talk: Oakland FamilySearch Center Family History Classes: https://www.familysearch.org/en/centers/oakland_california/classes
MAY
2025