As April drew to a close, people at media outlets, schools, libraries and businesses statewide were shocked to find out that free access to the California Digital Newspaper Collection (cdnc.ucr.edu)—and the continued existence of this valuable online statewide newspaper archive—could soon come to an end.
Hosted and managed by the University of California, Riverside, since its launch in 2007, the CDNC archive may have to shut down its operations after June 30 due to the state government’s failure to deliver the fiscal year 2024-2025 funding approved by the Legislature last year.
After exhausting contingency funds, the CDNC is almost $300,000 in debt. Those dollars were spent by the archive management team to cover the cost of its operations over the last year. Now the team is scrambling to replace the mysteriously “disappeared” funds through donations from individuals or organizations.
Brian Geiger, director of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research at UC-Riverside, said shortly before this article’s publication that so far, the CDNC team had received $85,000 in contributions. While that is a noteworthy achievement, that leaves $215,000 needed before June 30. If you’re so inclined, you can make a donation at www.givecampus.com/schools/UniversityofCaliforniaRiverside/help-preserve-the-california-digital-newspaper-collection.
Jeannie Kays, the director of Palm Springs library services, explained how vital the voluminous and keyword-searchable collection of hundreds of California newspapers is to the library’s research capabilities.
“Starting in 2013, we obtained grant funding to do a project for (the Palm Springs Public Library) called ‘Accessing the Past,’ which is a local history digital collaborative,” Kays said. “We digitize our local collection of phone books, yearbooks and various little things. But the biggest project we’ve ever done is digitize The Desert Sun archive. We received grant funding, and we worked with the CDNC to get The Desert Sun from 1934 to 1993 digitized, and they host it for us. … With grant funds and our own in-kind city funds, (the city of Palm Springs) spent almost $300,000 of funds to digitize this, to set up our archive and get this project going. It was a giant undertaking, because we had to get permission from The Desert Sun’s publisher, Gannett, (before working) with the CDNC.”
The CDNC includes content from hundreds of different newspapers that have been published throughout the state, going back as far as 1846. Many of the newspapers are no longer in publication. One can find archives from defunct area publications like the Palm Springs News (from 1934-1951), the Palm Desert Post (1963-1999) and Palm Desert’s short-lived Post Script (1980-81). The 21,603,341 pages in the CDNC archive, as of this writing, can be searched and viewed free of charge online.
We asked Geiger why the state government failed to deliver the $430,000 in funds last year that had been approved by the Legislature.
“The money for 2024-2025 was allocated by the Legislature, but it doesn’t come directly to us,” Geiger said. “It goes through the State Library, who then passes it down to us. … Our funding, just like funding to a lot of state agencies, was reduced by 7.85%, so that part was clear … but the second part, why they withheld it all, wasn’t entirely clear to me. As far as I can tell from the email they sent, it seems like the library was hit with so many cuts this year that they decided they needed the money up there, rather than send it down to the CDNC.”
Geiger theorized that the State Library may have been counting on using federal funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to cover the CDNC’s allocation.
“This is all conjecture,” Geiger said, “but my guess is they thought they would be able to give us IMLS money if they absolutely had to, and then they realized IMLS was being cut (due to an executive order by President Trump), so they had no recourse other than to just not send us anything.”
Trump is trying to completely eliminate the IMLS—which also helped with the city’s digitization of The Desert Sun’s archives.
“The initial grant that we got was through the California State Library,” Kays said. “I will tell you, though, that those were federal funds originally from the IMLS. This is one of the projects that benefited from that funding years ago.”
In the 18 years since the archive was started, the CDNC has grown substantially and is positioned to potentially quadruple the amount of historical information it can provide.
“Right now, it has about 50 million pages that we digitized, and about (21 million) of those are actually publicly accessible right now,” Geiger said. “I estimate there’s somewhere between 150 and 200 million pages we could digitize; that work will probably end if the archive closes down. If we stop work, and if the archive lives on at all, it will live on as 50 million pages. … It will be a static archive at that point.”
Geiger held out hope that the CDNC could get some last-minute help from the Legislature. Over a week, the Independent reached out several times to the offices of Assemblymember Greg Wallis and state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh requesting interviews about the predicament facing the CDNC, but we received no response.
“It seems like we have pretty strong support in the budget subcommittee, from what I can gather, but I’m not quite sure what, if anything, the Legislature could do for us in 2024-2025—especially since they already approved the money for us, you know? … This university, like all of the University of California schools and most higher-education (institutions) in California, is facing its own cuts each year, compounded by all the federal cutbacks. So they’re not in a position to fund the $300,000 that we’re short. It might be in a position to host the contents, and that’s something we’re exploring, but in terms of keeping us going as an active project, the university isn’t in a position to support us to do that.”
Geiger mentioned one potential positive scenario that could extend the life of the CDNC.
“As long as (UC-Riverside can) have assurances that we’ll get the (2025-2026 state) money at some point in the coming year, that’s good enough for the university, I think. But a lot is going to have to happen very quickly to keep the doors open.”
What will happen if UC-Riverside decides it can no longer host the CDNC, which gets 130,000-plus unique monthly visitors?
“We are exploring different options for hosting,” Geiger said. “My guess is that there won’t be one CDNC anymore. If we do find other hosting options, it’ll probably be data is distributed across a number of different platforms, so there won’t be one central location to use any longer. That’s because of the size of the collections, which are humongous. I don’t know if there are many institutions that would want to take on a collection of that size, both in terms of the cost and the time. … We’re also exploring making sure that the data is backed up. We have backup to tapes already, but we’re looking at another backup option as well, just so that the data is preserved.”
“I get people calling me from all over the country, asking for various obituaries (and other) research. Actually, the reporters from The Desert Sun contact us from time to time, writing stories from the past. We give them tips and tricks on how to best search their own archives.”
Jeannie Kays, director of Palm Springs library services
Kays said she hopes the CDNC will get a reprieve with help from the state.
“It affects so many people,” Kays said. “You don’t realize what’s missing when things get turned off (because) the state loses the federal funding. Then, the state funding goes away, and suddenly, you realize something’s missing that you need. The impact is on more than just one or two people. I get people calling me from all over the country, asking for various obituaries (and other) research. Actually, the reporters from The Desert Sun contact us from time to time, writing stories from the past. We give them tips and tricks on how to best search their own archives. … I mean, there’s a lot of information in these newspapers.”
Perhaps the best description of what losing this valuable resource would mean came from a Desert Sun opinion piece co-authored by Kays and Randy Lovely, president of the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation: “We understand the state is facing tough fiscal choices. But the CDNC is not a luxury—it is a foundational public good. Preserving local journalism isn’t about nostalgia; it’s about continuity. Without access to our past, we are unmoored in the present and blind to the future.”