Nebraska Authors

The information about Nebraska authors provided on this website comes from the special collection of Nebraska authors at Lincoln City Libraries known as The Jane Pope Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors. This information has been collected by many hands over the past 50 years. The Nebraska Author Information Link (NAIL), as the database was originally called, was created as a means to aggregate author information gathered from newspapers and other contemporary publications.

Beginning as early as 1959, Heritage Room volunteers clipped, copied and preserved information on Nebraska writers. This method resulted in broad, but not exhaustive, coverage of Nebraska writers. It helped librarians find out about Nebraska authors they had not previously encountered. Many author profiles in the database are derived entirely from news clippings provided by patrons and volunteers.

It was always a work in progress, and remains so. It has been updated and extended when authors were the subjects of library displays, or participated in library programs. Coverage of better known and more influential authors has been reviewed and revised from time to time. Support given to us to enable us to bring the database online has allowed us to update it, improve its accuracy and extend its coverage.

We believe that making the database available to the public will enable us to improve it in new ways. Users will be able to suggest new information about listed authors to us and will be able to propose new authors for inclusion.

Support from the Nebraska Literary Heritage Association, Lincoln City Libraries, and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has enabled us to make the information in our Nebraska Authors database available.

October 2018 update: Nebraskaauthors.org is the proud recipient of the Nebraska Library Association's 2018 Mari Sandoz Award for making a "significant, enduring contribution to the Nebraska book world."