“The Dziennik”: Making a Great and Beloved Polish American Newspaper Available Online
From 1911 to 1957, the Dziennik dla Wszystkich (Everybody’s Daily newspaper) reported local, regional, national and international news to the Buffalo and Western New York Polish American community in the Polish language. Much of the Dziennik is now available (on microfilm only) in the Library of Congress, and through various libraries and institutions in Western New York. In 2017, PGSNYS mounted a campaign to convert these microfilmed editions to digital format, with the goal of making the Dziennik searchable through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) at New York State Historic Newspapers, and accessible to non-Polish speakers through ever-improving software for translation from Polish to English.
However, during that process, the PGSNYS discovered that almost 10 years of the Dziennik’s local editions from historically significant years (1941–48, 1950–52 and 1957) were not available on microfilm. In 2022, PGSNYS mounted a campaign to digitize the remaining Dziennik issues by entering into a collaboration with the Polish Museum of America, in Chicago, Illinois, where the only extant copies of the Dziennik are housed, and the Digital Archive Group, an experienced archival services company in Buffalo Grove, IL.
Once completed, the digitized Dziennik will yield a wealth of information about Western New York’s Polish people, businesses, churches, schools, institutions, and events not covered by the mainstream press, including
- Local politics and business news
- Church, school, arts and social events
- Bios of leaders and community members
- Birth and marriage announcements and obituaries
- WWII news on servicemen, editorials, ads for war bonds and recruitment
- 1950s Cold War and Labor Movement
We Invite You to Make a Gift
This digitization project is an ambitious one for an organization of our size. The original estimate for the project was $35,690 to digitize the approximately 57,000 newsprint pages of local editions, with an additional $2,850 needed to cover image processing costs to render the images OCR-searchable, for a total of $38,540. Our first ($10,000) round of digitization was completed in Spring 2023, funded by a $5,000 grant from the Permanent Chair of Polish Culture at Canisius University, and individual donations. A $10,000 grant from the Louis Skalny Foundation in Rochester, NY, supported completion of the second round of digitization by the end of 2023. Thanks to a Matching Pledge Challenge that wrapped up on August 1, 2024, we raised an additional $5,300 from individuals, leaving $13,240 left to be raised.
Please join with like-minded individuals and organizations who care about the history of Buffalo’s and Western New York’s Polish American community by making a contribution of $10, $25, $100, or even $500 to the Dziennik digitization.
Donations in any amount will help preserve and make accessible this important record of Polish American life during the 1940s and 1950s for generations of students, historians, genealogists, journalists and community members! Indeed, you may find your family within the Dziennik’s pages!
You can make a contribution online or mail a check to:
The Polish Genealogical Society of New York State is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.
(Dziennik is pronounced “Jenn-Neek”)
PGSNYS gratefully acknowledges Monica Polowy Winter for her donation of $2,500 to this project.