The Tousey Project

FAIN: PW-285073-22

Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL 60115-2828)
Matthew Charles Short (Project Director: July 2021 to present)
Demian Katz (Co Project Director: June 2022 to present)

Digitizing 4,218 volumes of dime novels and story papers published by Frank Tousey. A partnership among five academic libraries—Northern Illinois University, Villanova University, Stanford University, Bowling Green State University, and Oberlin College—the project would provide images and full texts of the works, catalog records for the volumes, and indexed entries for the stories, series, and authors to augment an existing online bibliography of dime novels. 

The Tousey Project seeks to digitize the dime novels of Frank Tousey, the most sensational and prolific publisher of the format. Best known for his series marketed to children, Tousey made an indelible mark on American culture through the introduction of the first American science fiction hero, Frank Reade, and the popularization of stories about the outlaw Jesse James. This digitization project builds directly on the recently completed Albert Johannsen Project and the ongoing Street & Smith Project, with partners at Northern Illinois University, Villanova University, Stanford University, Bowling Green State University, and Oberlin College and Conservatory. In addition to making thousands of these publications widely available for the first time anywhere in over a century, the project will also add index entries for every story, series, and author to the online dime novel bibliography at dimenovels.org, which will be used to aggregate each partner’s digital dime novel holdings.