Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Hooray for Newspapers!

It's amazing how quickly time can get away from you.  I knew it had been a while since I had posted the new additions to the Wikipedia newspaper archives page, but I didn't realize it had been eight months.  That's obviously far too long.  My only excuse is that I've been busy trying to move to Portland, Oregon, and it's amazing how much time it takes to do all the paperwork.

Lucky for us researchers, almost all of the newspapers added have free access.  The exception is the Friedens Messenger, for which you need to be a paid member of the St. Louis Genealogical society.

• Hungary:  Although the newspaper itself has closed down, the online archive of Népszabadság is being maintained for free access.  I don't read Hungarian, however, and I can't figure out what years are covered.

• Korea (new country!):  Yes, you read that right, Korea.  Not North or South, but just plain old Korea.  The National Library of Korea (in South Korea) has an online collection of newspapers published in Korea prior to 1950.  The link I posted is to the English-language interface, but the newspapers are in Korean.

• Mexico:  El Universal is online for 1999 to the present.

• Sierra Leone:  I discovered that Early Dawn, available on FultonHistory.com and incorrectly labeled as "Earley Dawn", is also on the Internet Archive and much easier to read, although the site notes that some issues are missing.

• California:  The Monterey Public Library has digitized its historical newspaper collection and placed it online for free.  The 34 newspapers range from 1846 to the present.  They are listed on the library's site in chronological order, which is a little different.

• Florida:  The Weekly Challenger, the newspaper of the black community of St. Petersburg, has partnered with the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg, which is now hosting digitized issues of the paper for 1976, 1985–1988, and 2009–2016.  Plans are to to digitize more historic issues and add them to the online archive.

• Idaho:  The University of Idaho has digitized the historical run of Argonaut, the student newspaper, and posted it online.

• Illinois:  The Aurora Public Library has online indices for the Aurora Beacon-News for obituaries (1933–2004 with many gaps) and for a clipping collection (1925–1956 and 1963–1978).

• Illinois:  The Coal City Public Library has a searchable index for obituaries and death notices, most of which came from the Coal City Courant newspaper.  The index can be searched only by surname, and nothing on the page indicates what years the database covers.  I searched for Smith as a general test, and years ranged from 1884 to 2017.

• Kansas:  The Rossville Community Library not only has posted an obituary index online, it has gone the extra step and scanned and posted the obituaries listed in the index.

• Massachusetts:  Smith College has placed every issue of its alumnae quarterly, for 1909 to the present, online.

• Michigan:  Oakland County has an online historical archive site which houses what appears to be a substantial collection of digitized newspapers.  Unfortunately, I can't find a way to determine the names of the newspapers in the collection or what years it covers.  Seventy-four locations are listed on the browse page.

• Michigan:  The University of Michigan has an online archive of the historical run of the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily.

• Missouri:  The St. Louis Genealogical Society has posted issue of the Friedens Messenger, published by the Friedens United Church of Christ, for 1940 and earlier, although the range is not specified.  Paid members of the society may view the digitized files.

• New Jersey:  The Elizabeth Daily Journal for 1872–1915 (with more years to be digitized and posted online) is available courtesy of the Elizabeth Public Library.

• New York:  The entire run of the New Yorker, all the way back to 1925, is now available through the New York Public Library site with a library card.

• Ohio:  The Lepper Public Library has a collection of seventeen newspapers covering the Lisbon (formerly New Lisbon) area, ranging from 1810 to 2011 (with a lot of gaps).

• Ohio:  The Ohio National Guard has shifted its publication, The Buckeye Guard, from print to digital and has posted the archives of the print edition (1976–2011) on its new site.

• Ohio:  The Salem Public Library has an obituary index for 1938–2016 for the Salem News and will send you a copy of the obituary.  It also has the "Yesteryears" section of the News for 1991–2002 online.

• Ohio:  The Warren–Trumbull County Public Library has two indices for obituaries:  The Warren Tribune Chronicle for 1900–1949 and the Youngstown Vindicator for 2011–2014.

• Pennsylvania:  Elizabethtown College has digitized its students newspapers, Our College Times (1904–1934) and The Etownian (1934–2009), and uploaded them to the Internet Archive.

• Tennessee:  A near-complete archive of the original incarnation of Confederate Veteran magazine, from 1893–1932, including a searchable index, can be found on the Internet Archive.  I placed it under Tennessee because that's where it was published.

• Texas:  The Texas Obituary Project is a collection of scanned obits from LGBT publications, dating back to 1975.

• Wisconsin:  The complete historical run of the print version of the UWM Post, the student newspaper of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, has been digitized.

• Multistate:  The Catholic News Archive currently has nine newspapers (including one issue from 1832!) from five different states and the United States in general.  This is a Veridian site (yay!), and more newspapers will be added over time.

• Multistate:  FamilySearch.org now has a database of GenealogyBank obituaries from 1980–2014.  Even though GenealogyBank itself is a pay site, this collection is free.

• Worldwide:  Catholic Newspapers Online is a portal collecting links to Catholic newspapers from multiple countries, both historical and current, and has 22 pages of links so far.

• Worldwide:  "Last Seen:  Finding Family after Slavery" is a collection of ads posted in newspapers after Emancipation, where people tried to find relatives from whom they had been separated, whether by slavery, escape, or the military.  Currently the volunteer effort includes notices one Canadian and thirteen U.S. newspapers, but the project continually grows.

• Worldwide:  The Mennonite Library and Archives in Kansas has placed online a large collection of German-language newspapers and other publications from German Mennonites.  The countries include Canada and Paraguay!

4 comments:

  1. Thanks, Janice, my hubby has ancestors from Ohio and Michigan, will check out the newspapers you've mentioned! Good luck with your move.

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    1. Thanks for the good wishes, and good luck to you with your newspaper searches!

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  2. Janice, thanks for these great updates! To be clear, the FamilySearch.org database of U.S. GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014, is an index of data. To view the full obituary you have to have a paid account at GenealogyBank.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the clarification, Kathryn. I thought it was unusual for NewsBank to give something away for free.

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