The United States Newspaper Program is a national effort to preserve America's historic press. Each state library inventories the newspaper collections of its local libraries, museums, courthouses and other sites, and catalogs them on a national database maintained by the Online Computer Library Center www.oclc.org.

Under the program, microfilm copies of newspapers are available anywhere in the country through interlibrary loan. Borrowers typically pay a small fee ($5-$20) and may have to wait four to six weeks. Visit www.neh.gov/preservation/usnp.html for more information; you can also access online newspaper morgues at 50 state libraries and eight National Newspaper Repositories, listed below:

• American Antiquarian Society, 14,324 titles cataloged: 185 Salisbury St., Worcester, MA 01609, (508) 755-5221, rlm@mwa.org, www.americanantiquarian.org/collections.htm