Project Update

The Newspaper Project has entered into the final year of its final National Endowment for the Humanities grant. On June 30, 2006, the Project will officially close. The Project has been in operation since March 1987.

June was a month of transitions with the departure of Heather Hochstatter, preservation coordinator since August 2001, and Mary Weber, senior collation assistant, since April 1999. Rosemary Button, who has been working with the Project since 2003, has been appointed as the new preservation coordinator. Rachel Dworkin was hired as the new project assistant.

Newspapers from Flatbush, Brooklyn, Greece, Troy, Pawling, Mount Vernon, Chappaqua, and Port Jervis make up the 87,848 pages of New York State history filmed this quarter.

The Project has redesigned its listings of newspapers on microfilm. These can be viewed by visiting the Project's website at http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/nysnp.

NYSNP Statistics through June 30, 2005

The New York State Library submitted a grant application to the National Endowment for the Humanities for participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) in October. NDNP will create a national, digital resource of significant United States newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. The searchable database, to be developed over a 20 year period, will be freely accessible via the Internet.

Friends Group

Meetings of the Friends of the NYSNP were held on April 19, May 17, and June 21.

Lamplight versus moonshine

A report was adopted at one of the late meetings of the Board of Assistant Alderman of this city, in favour of paying the lamplighters for every night in the year. The practice heretofore has been, we believe, to pay them for their services on those nights only when their services were actually rendered, and not to consider them entitled to wages for the gratuitous illumination of the moon. But moonshine and lamplight are hereafter to be on a par, and the citizens are to be taxed at the same rate for one as for the other. "If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light," was the boastful speech of Cloten, in Cymbeline. But our Common Council can do greater things than Caesar; and though they have not yet altogether accomplished the feat of putting the moon in their pockets, they have preformed what Cloten thought more difficult, and made us pay tribute for its light. What a glorious sinecure the lamplighters would have of it, if the Common Council would but extend their kindness a little further, and ordain that the moon shall shine every night in the year!

Taken from The Plaindealer December 3, 1836