Greenbelt in the 1960s: a libel suit filed against the News Review, Peace in Vietnam rallies, Spiro Agnew elected as Maryland’s governor (with hearty support from Greenbelt voters). Cecilia Franck is getting a taste of what life in Greenbelt was like back then while scanning newspapers for the Greenbelt Archive Project (GAP). Franck, a University of Maryland (UMD) graduate student in library science, has worked 20 hours a week for the project since late January, starting with issues from 1964 and working forward. Papers through 1968 are now done and the new digital versions will soon be uploaded to the Internet Archive.
Much has happened since GAP took up residence in the Community Center in September 2018. Several volunteers from the community have teamed with GAP staff on a variety of tasks. Working with newspapers from the News Review’s holdings, they selected the ‘best’ copy of each issue from 1943 through 2001 for scanning and finished just before the March 1 target date. Papers from 1943 through 1963 have been transferred to GAP’s collaborator, UMD Libraries, for scanning by a contractor paid by a grant UMD received for participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program (see loc.gov/ndnp). The remainder will be scanned by Franck or other UMD students.
Read more of this story in the March 7 News Review.
