We are coming down the home stretch of the Diamondback digitization project! All the content from the very first issue of The Triangle on January 1, 1910, through the end of the fall 1998 semester is now available online at go.umd.edu/dbk_archives! Seeing this dream for the University Archives coming to fruition is very, very exciting, and we are delighted that you chose to support this effort.

You have a chance on #GivingDayUMD to push us a little closer to our goal. We need $10,000-$15,000 to finish digitizing the paper issues up to the present time, and with your help, we will make it happen. Please visit givingday.umd.edu on Wednesday, March 7, to make a gift and join Testudo in supporting UMD!

Team DigitalDBK is pleased to announce that additional years of The Diamondback have recently been added to the UMD Student Newspapers database at go.umd.edu/dbk_archives. Issues included now stretch from the paper's first issue as The Triangle on January 1, 1910, through December 1985. The last front page currently available appears below.

Please visit the site to explore the new issues and share information about our project. 

Thank you for your support of this transformational initiative! If you have not already contributed to our 2017 Launch campaign at go.umd.edu/dbk_finish, please consider doing so today! Our campaign closes on December 13, and all gifts, large and small, are greatly appreciated.

As donors to our 2015 campaign to digitize The Diamondback and help make University of Maryland history come alive, we wanted to give you a special sneak preview of the results of your gifts! The UMD Student Newspapers database, which currently covers issues of The Diamondback and its predecessor papers from 1910 to 1971, will be officially released to the public on October 2, but you get the chance to start searching and clipping articles in advance!

The database, https://www.lib.umd.edu/univarchives/student-newspapers, provides both keyword and date access to article titles and content. Users can search names and topics across all the issues, as well as focusing in on a particular day, month, or year of publication or publication title. Content can also be isolated in an individual issue and saved as a jpg file, using the clipping tool provided on the website. A more detailed explanation of the database functions appears on the website's About page.

This is truly a transformational project for the University of Maryland Archives, allowing current students, faculty, and staff, UMD alumni, and anyone anywhere in the world who is interested in the history of the University of Maryland ready access to the primary student newspaper whose coverage of events provides an invaluable perspective on campus, national, and international events, issues, individuals, and organizations.

We could not have come this far without your support through LaunchUMD.  We are also grateful for a mini-grant from Maryland Milestones/Anacostia Trails Heritage Area, which we received following the conclusion of the Launch campaign. Your contributions are acknowledged on the Donor Honor Roll page on the website.

Beginning November 1, we will undertake a second Launch UMD campaign to raise the funds needed to complete the digitization of all remaining issues and to ensure that the hard copy of the paper will continue to be digitized as long as it is published; the campaign will conclude on December 13. We will send you a reminder notice when this campaign kicks off. With your continuing support, we can put this amazing project over the finish line!

Please visit https://www.lib.umd.edu/univarchives/student-newspapers soon and take a look at the first 61 years of The Diamondback!

Dear Diamondback Digitization Donors:

I am excited to tell you that we are nearing the soft launch of phase one of the digitized Diamondback, which will include the papers from January 1910 to October 1971. Initially, the issues will be searchable primarily by date, but we will be able to provide limited keyword searching of article titles as well; our goal is to reach full keyword searchability by the end of the summer. More information about the location of the website and accessing its content should be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

One feature we would like to incorporate into the site is a donor recognition page to thank you for your contribution to support this transformational project. We will not reveal the amount of your gift, just your name. If you would prefer not to be listed, please let me know by June 15, so we can respect your wishes as we work to enhance the Student Newspapers website. You can email me at aturkos@umd.edu or call me at 301-405-9060 to let me know you do not wish to be listed. If I don't hear from you by June 15, I will assume that we have the green light to list your name.

Thank you again for your support of this initiative, and stay tuned for the official launch announcement!

Anne Turkos, University Archivist

We received a great question today, #GivingTuesday, about whether donations are still being accepted for the Diamondback Preservation and Access Fund that we started as part of our LaunchUMD project in 2015. The very good news is yes, you can!!! The fund is an open and active one and is actually featured on the UMD giving page today: http://giving.umd.edu/giving/. If you access this page in the future and don't see it listed on the main page, you can click on "Programs," then "Support University Libraries," and search for the name of the fund to make your donation.

Another piece of good news is that we are planning a second LaunchUMD campaign once the first batch of digitized issues goes live, and we have something to demonstrate to donors. We hope that will occur sometime in the spring 2017 semester!

We appreciate your support for this transformational project and would love to have you as a repeat donor!

TEAM DIGIDBK

Quality control review is complete, and we are ready to ingest the first batch of digitized Diamondback issues, covering 1910 through October 1971, into the database the Libraries' Digital Systems and Stewardship staff is creating!!! Hope to have all of this accessible in spring 2017! Check back for further updates!

We made it!  We met our Friends of the Libraries' $5,000 match on Day Two of our project!  That's just incredible, and we deeply appreciate the contributions of all our donors who have so quickly and enthusiastically responded to our call to help make UMD history come alive!

Even more exciting is that the Friends have pledged a second $5,000 match to help us keep things going! Please share the news about our project with as many people as possible and help us toward this second major benchmark!

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU!

TEAM DIGIDBK

You all have greatly exceeded our hopes and dreams for this initiative, and we deeply appreciate your support! Because of your enthusiastic response, starting today we are stretching the goal for our project to $15,000! Thanks to donors like you, we are confident that we can take our Launch UMD work to the next level! Please take a few minutes to share the good news about our project with 5 people you know and ask them to help you make UMD history come alive, and check back soon to see how we are doing!

Watch for a special announcement about a Maryland Day challenge later this week! We have the chance to do something really special on Saturday, with your help!

Yesterday we set our stretch goal of $15,000, and today we met our $10,000 match from the Friends of the UMD Libraries! What a terrific week this has been so far, thanks to your generosity!  We can't wait to see what happens on Maryland Day! Please continue sharing the information about our project with as many of your friends and family members as possible, and let's see what we can do to take this project to the next level!

GO #DIGIDBK!

If you give a gift of $1500 tomorrow on Maryland Day, you can be the lucky recipient of one of the shiny, red Testudos constructed on the 3-D printer in the John and Stella Graves MakerSpace in McKeldin Library! Check it out on the University Archives Twitter feed:https://twitter.com/UMDArchives/status/591685196291960832.

This morning we reached our $15,000 stretch goal, so we are going to take it to the next level and shoot for $20,000!  Thank you to all our donors for their financial support and their help in spreading the news about our project! Please help us keep this effort going until our project concludes on May 8. If we really hit the fundraising trail hard, we could set a new record for Launch UMD gifts--we have to beat the honey bees at $24,000 and the Mighty Sound of Maryland equipment van at $30,000, but I bet we are up to this challenge!

Go #digidbk!!!

Only one week left in our campaign to digitize the Diamondback and make it accessible online! We have had tremendous success so far and greatly appreciate the support from all our donors. With your help and the $10,000 match from the Friends of the Libraries, we are closing in on the all-time record for funds raised through Launch UMD. The Mighty Sound of Maryland, the university's marching band, gathered over $30,000 to fund the purchase of a new van to carry all their equipment, and it would be awesome if we could beat their total!

Help us become Launch UMD champions by reaching out to 5 friends, family members, and colleagues today and daily throughout the coming week and encouraging them to donate. With your assistance, we can end our campaign on a high note next Friday!

Go #digiDBK!

Today is the final day of our campaign, and it's been a terrific run, thanks to all of you! This morning we achieved 300% of our original goal, and I know by the end of the day, we will be the all-time fundraising champions for Launch. Your support has been tremendous, and the University Archives staff looks forward to beginning work on digitizing the Diamondback and making it accessible to all of you and our faculty, staff, students, and alumni, as well as anyone interested in the history of the University of Maryland.

We can't thank you enough for getting us started on realizing a long-time dream!

Team DigiDBK