Sunday, January 10, 2016

Online Newspaper Archive Round-up

It's been a couple of months, so it's time to post about the latest links to be added to the Wikipedia newspaper archive page.  Most of the new links are free, which is always appreciated.  One new country has been added, though I don't know how many people are researching Sierra Leone in the late 1800's.  Some of the new links are actually magazine archives, but they still seem to fit under the newspaper/periodical category.

I've been seeing many posts lately about college yearbooks being digitized, but that really is a different kind of publication.  What do you think, should there be a Wikipedia page collecting listings of online archives of college yearbooks?

• Saskatchewan, Canada:  The Saskatchewan Historic Newspapers Online collection has newspapers from many cities and towns, but I can't find a list of titles or dates that are covered.

• Canada (multiprovince):   The Drouin Institute has links to an English-language page with transcribed obituaries, which is free.  The Institute also has a paid subscription site which has newspaper images and many more records.

• England:  The Middle East magazine, a well regarded journal about the Middle East, has an online archive covering 1974–2014, available only as an institutional subscription.

• Sierra Leone:  The Earley Dawn, published in Bonthe from 1885–1892, has been digitized and is available on the FultonHistory.com site.  Heaven knows where Tom Tryniski found this microfilm!

• United Kingdom:  The Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps for 1903–present, plus index volumes for 1903–1965, is online.  It seems to be free, but I'm not completely sure.

• California:  The Hemet–San Jacinto Genealogical Society has an obituary index for the Hemet News, Press Enterprise, and Valley Chronicle, but no indication of the years covered.

• California:  The J, the weekly Jewish newspaper for the San Francisco Bay Area, has an archive going back to 1995.  The paper includes many wedding announcements, obituaries, and other life events.

• Georgia:  The Callaway Beacon was a weekly magazine published for the employees and families of the Callaway Mills Company in LaGrange, Georgia.  Issues from 1955 and 1957 are now online.

• Illinois:  The Polish Genealogical Society of America has posted indices of death notices appearing in the Chicago Polish-language newspaper Dziennik Chicagoski, for 1890–1971.  If you find an obituary you want, you can order a copy from the society,

• Indiana:  The Hamilton East Public Library has a newspaper index for Hamilton County, with no list of years or titles covered.  On the other hand, if you find a relevant article, they will send you a scan by e-mail for no charge.

• Michigan:  The Michigan Digital Newspaper Portal has links to individual newspaper sites and also allows you to search the entire collection in one place.

• New York:  The famous Yiddish newspaper The Forward/Forverts and two more Jewish newspapers published in New York have been added to the growing collection of Jewish newspapers on the National Library of Israel site.  I do not read Yiddish, so I am not sure, but I think the paper is searchable in Yiddish.

• New York:  A database of New York Evening Post death notices from 1801–1890 is in the collections at NEHGS.

• New York:  The Ram, the Fordham University student paper, is online from about 1914–2008.  It's hard to tell exactly what years are covered, as the dates are not displayed in order, even when I request the database to do so.  I have found articles about one of my cousins who attended the dental school at Fordham in the paper.

• New York:  The Troy Genealogical Society has added several more indices from newspapers:  a marriage index from the Burden Iron Company, and death notices from Troy newspapers for 1797–1860.  From the latter, notices for Revolutionary War soldiers and soldiers from other wars have separate lists online.

• Ohio:  The Toledo–Lucas County Public Library has posted an obituary index for the Toledo Blade for 1837–present.

• Pennsylvania:  Someone at the Adams Memorial Library has a sense of humor.  The Latrobe Bulletin obituary index for 1902–present has been dubbed the "dead-a-base."

• South Dakota:  South Dakota only recently was added to the Chronicling America collection, with five newspapers.  Now 13 newspapers covering 1875–1919 are online.

• Multistate:  Aviation Week & Space Technology has published an online archive of all of its issues, dating back to 1916.

• Multistate:  The Garon family newspaper articles is a collection relating to that particular family and its related lines.  The articles cover 1855–2013 and are mostly from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, but there are a lot of them with a wide range of subjects.

• Multistate:  The Media History Digital Library is a growing collection of periodicals relating to the histories of the movie, broadcasting, and sound industries.  One of the subcategories is even "Government and Law."

• Multistate and World:  Newspapers in Microform is a Library of Congress catalog of newspapers published in the U.S. and around the world from 1948–1983, downloadable as three PDF files.

Other Newspaper News

The Chicago Tribune has a beta site for its new archive search engine, which is currently free to use.  After the beta has finished, the site will  become a paid subscription one.  Coverage appears to be complete from 1857–1991, with some issues going back to 1849.  There is also a FAQ page.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has created a contest for people to use the Chronicling America database.  It wants people to create Web-based projects based on information from the newspapers in the database.  Prizes are $5,000 for first, $3,00 for second, and $2,000 for third place, with separate prizes possible for K–12 contestants.  The contest closes June 15, 2016.

NEH is also currently accepting proposals from institutions that would like to apply for grants to have their newspapers digitized and become part of the National Digital Newspaper Program.  The deadline for receipt of proposals is January 14, 2016.

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