The UNLV University Libraries has completed digitization of the Las Vegas Sentinel-Voice, a newspaper primarily focused on reporting for the African American community in Las Vegas that was published from 1964 to 2013.
“The Las Vegas Sentinel-Voice digitization was a high-priority project in our archives to provide online access to important primary sources from our region’s African American community,” said Cory Lampert, head of digital collections at the UNLV University Libraries. “UNLV is now able to provide readers and researchers with online access to the local voice of Las Vegas’s African American community in a free, online, globally accessible digital collection.”
The digitization project was funded by a $93,500 Nevada Library Services and Technology Act grant awarded to Lampert, Jason Vaughan, director of libraries technologies, and Peter Michel, then-director of special collections & archives who retired in December 2022. Under the direction of project manager Amy Check, 2,329 newspaper issues were digitized across multiple formats (microfilm and paper copies). This included 40,185 newspaper pages and resulted in 162,094 digital files.
The Las Vegas Sentinel-Voice showcases news, people, advertising, and unique themes such as the Civil Rights movement and notable ”firsts” in the community, primarily focusing on the Westside neighborhood.
The newspaper originally began publication in 1963 as the Las Vegas Voice. In 1980, the Las Vegas Sentinel was launched to compete with the Voice, and in late 1982, the two newspapers merged into the Las Vegas Sentinel-Voice. The Sentinel-Voice ceased publication in January 2014. A more in-depth history of the newspaper’s publication can be found at the UNLV Special Collections & Archives portal.
The Las Vegas Sentinel-Voice digitization project is an extension of UNLV University Libraries’ efforts to digitize historical Nevada newspapers through Chronicling America, a nationwide project from the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. UNLV digitized more than 300,000 pages of Nevada newspapers, representing every county in the state, through the project.
“Accessing historical newspapers through print or microfilm can be a difficult and time-consuming process for researchers of any skill level,” said Vaughan. “The UNLV Libraries has been proud to lead this effort to digitize these historical newspapers, making them more easily accessible. They are content rich in the documentation of daily life and provide a first-hand perspective unavailable through other source materials.”
For more information on digitized newspapers through the UNLV Libraries, how best to access the digital collections for research, and be introduced to the newest addition to the online newspaper collections, visit the Nevada National Digital Newspaper Project website or the UNLV Special Collections and Archives portal.
