The Iowa Newspaper Project served as a pilot project for the OAH-Library of Congress United States Newspaper Project. In 1973 and 1974 the Organization of American Historians (OAH) received NEH funds to study the feasibility of revising and updating the most recent national bibliography of newspapers, Winifred Gregory's American Newspapers, 1821-1936. The OAH and the Library of Congress applied for and received an NEH grant to gather information and develop standards for the cataloging of newspapers in order to create a machine-readable newspaper bibliography. A major portion of the grant was funneled into a state level pilot project in Iowa. The aim of the Iowa pilot program was to collect previously unknown information on newspapers published in the state and to establish methods and procedures to serve as models for other states in a national program. The project was conducted under the general direction of the State Historical Society of Iowa with Alan Schroder serving as project director. The project was alloted 2 years (1976-1978) to collect holdings data, compile publishing histories for all titles located and transfer this data to worksheets in a machine-readable form. Much of this research was done by contacting academic and public libraries throughout the state and by consulting various published sources. A second NEH grant allowed the project to continue. Two publications, A Manual for Newspaper Bibliographic Projects : the Final Report of the Iowa Pilot Project of the OAH-LC United States Newspaper Project and A Bibliography of Iowa newspapers, 1836-1976, were products of the Iowa pilot program.
From the description of Iowa Newspaper Project records, 1976-1992. (Iowa Sate Historical Society). WorldCat record id: 62771777
