You should be aware that if some of your state newspapers are available in
commercial products, they will not be eligible for inclusion in the
Library of Congress free newspaper resource:

http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/

The National Digital Newspaper Program is projected to last 20 years and
include newspapers from all states:

http://www.neh.gov/projects/ndnp.html

Awardees for the 2007-2009 grant period were recently announced. They are
the same institutions from California, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia
that participated in the first grant, 2005-2007, and additionally the
Minnesota Historical Society, the University of Nebraska, and the
University of North Texas.

Andrea Vanek
Assistant Director/Librarian
California Newspaper Project
Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research
250 Moffitt Library
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
avanek@library.berkeley.edu
http://cbsr.ucr.edu

I work at one of the largest and most comprehensive state newspaper
> repositories in the country.  We are starting to get requests from
conglomerate publishers who want to digitize their titles (going back into
> the
> mid-1800s) from microfilm negatives that we filmed in-house over the
years
> and which we store and own.
>
> Our relationships with publishers has always been excellent--we recieve
free
> copies of newspapers to microfilm.  However, the enormous amount of
staff
> time and money involved in duplicatiing the negatives for digitization,
as
> well
> as microfilm ownership rights seem like they must be addressed on some
level.
> We are hoping to get an "institutional membership" for these digital
archives
> for which our members and patrons can access either remotely or in-house
to
> offset some of our costs.
>
> I'm sure other newspaper archives and serials librarians are running
into
> similar
> situations. Can anyone offer some helpful suggestions on this?
>