Washington Digital Newspapers has reached one million pages. Discover how the Washington State Library’s free online newspaper collection has grown from approximately 400,000 pages into an expansive statewide research resource.

Congratulations to our client, Washington State Library, whose Washington Digital Newspapers program officially surpassed one million online newspaper pages last month.

Available to the public free of charge, the collection includes publications that range from publications that predate Washington’s statehood to newspapers published in recent years, creating an expanding record of the people, places, events, and everyday experiences that have shaped the state.

More pages, more stories

When the Washington Digital Newspapers website launched on the Veridian platform in 2019, it provided full-text access to just over 400,000 historic newspaper pages. Seven years later, the collection has more than doubled.

The milestone reflects years of digitization, preservation, collaboration, and collection development by Washington State Library and its partners. Working with local libraries, museums, publishers, and communities, the Library continues to identify and digitize newspapers for educational, research, and non-commercial use.

Recent additions demonstrate the breadth of the expanding collection and include:

• Industrial Worker from Spokane and Seattle, covering 1909–1931

• The Fig Tree from Spokane, covering 2003–2024

• Issues of the Everett Daily Herald from the 1920s

• The Seattle Star, covering 1935–1947

• The Newport Miner, covering 2012–2019

• Cascadia Daily News from Bellingham, covering March 2022–February 2026
  
  

A platform designed to support continued growth

Washington State Library selected the Veridian presentation software in 2018 as it prepared to move its digital newspaper collection away from its previous Chronicling America-based viewing system.

The Library needed a stable, scalable platform designed specifically for complex digital newspaper collections. Its requirements included support for the Library of Congress METS/ALTO standard, improved search and browsing, and the capacity to accommodate a steadily expanding archive.

The new Washington Digital Newspapers website was completed within six months, including data migration, collection branding, and the development of custom discovery tools. Veridian’s cloud-hosting option also removed the hardware limitations the Library had been facing, creating greater capacity for future expansion.

Reflecting on the implementation, Washington National Digital Newspaper Project Director Shawn Schollmeyer said:

“The Veridian team was very responsive and easy to work with. They checked in on many points during data transfer and patiently answered many questions about the features and how they worked. They exceeded my expectations.”

Seven years later, the one-million-page milestone demonstrates the importance of establishing digital collection infrastructure that can continue to expand as new material becomes available.

Search, discovery, and community contribution

Visitors can search individual publications, explore newspapers by county, browse issues by date, and investigate names, locations, businesses, events, and subjects across the collection.

Registered users can save search results and research activity for longer-term projects. They can also contribute directly by improving the accuracy of the searchable text, making historic newspaper content easier for others to find.

Historic newspapers are searched using text generated through Optical Character Recognition, or OCR. Damaged pages, faded printing, complex newspaper layouts, and older typefaces can all cause the automatically generated text to contain errors. Through Veridian’s user text correction tools, registered visitors can review and correct this text. Each contribution can improve the discoverability of names, locations, and other information for future researchers. A dedicated User Text Correction Dashboard provides guidance, recommends pages for correction, and records the progress of community contributions. This turns newspaper research into a collaborative process, allowing users to help improve access to the collection over time.

Reaching one million pages is an important achievement, but it also represents another step in the continued development of this valuable statewide resource.

Congratulations to everyone at Washington State Library, the Office of the Secretary of State, and the many libraries, museums, publishers, funders, community partners, and contributors who have helped Washington Digital Newspapers reach this milestone.

Read the official Washington Secretary of State press release