The Nederland Public Library and The Mountain-Ear newspaper have received a grant to digitize issues of the newspaper. The grant will provide the cost of newspaper digitization for up to $3,750.

On Monday, March 14, 2022, Leigh Jeremias, digital collections consultant with the Colorado State Library, wrote to the newspaper and library. “I am pleased to inform you that your application for the 2022 Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (CHNC) New Content Support Program has been selected for an award!

“The team is excited by this new title, the geographic representation and your long term project. We would like to support these efforts as much as we can. With this in mind we would like to offer you a little more funding and digitize the below reels of The Mountain-Ear.

“The proposed reels would cover the period of October 25, 1977, to January 29, 1988. The support awards are not cash awards. The grant will provide for the cost of newspaper digitization for up to $3,750, which was your institution’s requested funding amount.”

The award amount will be used to offset the cost of digitizing newspaper pages for inclusion in the CNHC Collection, and will be applied by the Colorado State Library to support the actual digitization process through the existing CHNC vendor partners. The State Library will be managing the digitization process from start to finish.

Support awards require a 25 percent cash match, which will be $750 to CHNC by or before June 30, 2022. “On behalf of the CHNC team, I look forward to working with you on your digitization project in the coming months. Congratulations!”

Nederland Library Director Elektra Greer said she is so excited to be partnering with The Mountain-Ear to preserve and share local history. The library, the library district and foundation will pay the matching funds.

“We hope this brings renewed enthusiasm especially to our youth for the role that libraries and newspapers can play in preserving cultural heritage.” She said they started talking about this six months ago and submitted the application two months ago.

Future goals include expanding with the Nederland Historical Society through a different grant. “At a time in our world, when we see attempts at erasing history, nationally and globally, this preservation work is even more vitally important,” Greer said.

Barbara Hardt, publisher of The Mountain-Ear, said, “This is awesome news. It will start the process of digitizing the newspaper. This will take us through the first 11 plus years.

Jeremias explained that the CHNC is a service of the Colorado State Library, which pays the cost of maintaining the technical infrastructure of the CHNC site, and partners including libraries, archives, museums and historical societies pay the direct costs of digitization. The cost to add newspaper content that is already in a digital format (tiff or pdf) is .70 cents per page, already on microfilm is .80 cents per page and the cost to microfilm original newspapers and then scan that film is $1.05 per page and the cost to direct scan originals is $1.55 per page.

Generally, when microfilm is available, our partners choose to use the microfilm because it is more cost effective. Most of the microfilm that is found in libraries in the state is copies of negative microfilm film owned by History Colorado (HC).

“We have a standing agreement with HC to use their negative film when a project needs it; however, there are at times gaps in their collection and we have worked with film or originals from other institutions.” The Mountain-Ear is on film from its inception in 1977 to 2010. It’s possible they stopped filming this title in 2010 or they may have a backlog that they just haven’t filmed yet.

Hardt said, “Let’s start getting community support on this awesome project.” Need more information? Email publisher1977@gmail.com.

To donate to the digitization project, send your check or money order to The Mountain-Ear, PO Box 99, Nederland, CO 80466.