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!

The Latest in Genealogy Journals

I realized I have been remiss lately in letting everyone know what interesting articles are being published in the journals for which I am the editor.  And now that I've added a new (to me) journal to the list, there's a wider range of stories!

The most recent issue of ZichronNote came out at the end of November.  Australian Dani Haski wrote about the status of Jewish record books in Egypt, a subject of interest to her because her ancestors came from Egypt.  Susan MacLaughlin discussed her roots trip to Lithuania, which she originally thought was going to be to France.  Vivian Kahn updated our membership on the latest additions to the Hungarian Special Interest Group database on JewishGen.org.  Debra Katz tried to entice people sitting on the fence to jump in the DNA research pool and see what they can learn.  Fred Hoffman wrote about some pitfalls of machine translation, including "swanky oxen" and "fetus farms."  And SFBAJGS President Jeremy Frankel and several other members shared their perspectives on the 2016 IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, which took place in Seattle, Washington in August.

The Fall 2016 issue of The Baobab Tree was e-mailed to members in December (yes, when it was still fall, thank you).  We've had a glitch with the printer, so the print copy has not yet gone out, but it should soon.  The big story in this issue was the celebration of the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California's 20th anniversary, which was held at the September meeting.  Dera Williams wrote about the highlights of the day, and Jackie Chauhan contributed a list of some of the topics the society's speakers have addressed over the course of 20 years.  There's also a lovely photo gallery showing many of the attendees and honorees, including our beloved Electra Kimble Price and the ever-busy Ron Higgins.  Lavinia Schwarz wrapped up her three-part story about the research she did on her 2x-great-grandmother, a free woman of color in New Orleans.  A few AAGSNC members attended the 3rd International Black Genealogy Summit in Arlington, Virginia and had the opportunity to meet the Côte d'Ivoire ambassador to the United States.  And AAGSNC President Howard Edwards presented a plaque of appreciation to the Oakland FamilySearch Library in thanks for all of its support over the years.

My new baby is The California Nugget, the twice-yearly journal published by the California Genealogical Society.  This is my first issue, so there's been a learning curve, finding out about all the people and procedures involved.  It should be published this month.  Two things that will be new with this issue are a message from the president, currently Linda Harms Okazaki, in place of the previous message from the editor (because we all know I hate to write), and a regular column on genealogical methods by Rondina Muncy, CG.  In addition to those, Stella and Linda Allison wrote about their great-grandfather's sister, a Mexican immigrant to San Francisco who moved up economically from her beginnings in Mazatlán.  Scott McKinzie used DNA and old-fashioned paper research to determine who his grandfather was.  Joe Reilly and Tim Cox have stories about relatives who served and died in World War II.  Kathleen Javdani dove into research on her great-grandmother, trying to find if the information in a family narrative matched reality.  And Carolyn Ervin wrote about memories of her own great-grandmother, whom she was fortunate enough to meet shortly before she passed away.

There's a caveat, though.  (Isn't there always?)  To receive these fine journals, you need to be a member of the respective societies.  If you would like to read these articles, visit the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society (for ZichronNote), the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California (for The Baobab Tree), and the California Genealogical Society (for The California Nugget) to join and you can be reading them soon.

There is a way around that membership requirement, at least on a per-issue basis.  If you have a story published in an issue, you receive a copy!

Have you had a breakthrough in your research, solved a family mystery, discovered a different way to use resource materials, or walked where your ancestors walked?  Do you have an interesting story about your family?  We would love to read about it in one of the journals.  Submission guidelines for The Baobab Tree (including deadlines) and The California Nugget (which will probably be updated soon) are available online, or you can send me a message regarding any of the journals, and we can talk about it! 

Personal Research Projects Seeking Information and Participants

Usually the projects I write about are posted on public Web pages, often by organizations rather than individuals.  These, however, are smaller scale, people who sent messages to e-mail groups I'm in.  I checked with each of them beforehand to see if a little extra publicity about the projects might be helpful.

The Dora

Joke Stans is a graduate student at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, currently writing a Master's thesis about a Jewish refugee ship named the Dora.  This ship sailed from Amsterdam (with a stopover in Antwerp on 17 July 1939) to Palestine and arrived on 12 August 1939 at Sheffaym Beach.  The research is on the passengers who embarked in Antwerp and on the organization of the illegal Zionist undertaking (from the Belgian perspective).

The hope is to find more information concerning contacts between the Belgian authorities/leaders and the Palestinian, British, and Dutch embassies (a lot of organization on account of the Dutch Jewish Committee) or other representatives in the case of the Dora.

Perhaps information exists about contacts between Belgian Jewish committees (Belgian Zionist Federation, Jewish relief committees in Antwerp and Brussels) and governmental authorities or between different Jewish organizations (Hagana, which organized the trip; HICEM; Mossad l'Aliyah Bet; the Joint; Dutch Jewish committees).  So far five pages have been discovered in the State Archives in Brussels, but that is all.

The Belgian government offered assistance for the trip but denied its part in the undertaking to British emmissaries.

It is unknown so far who took the lead in this in Belgium, but perhaps Max Gottschalk had a role in the organization of the trip.  In addition, the Torczyner and Kubowitsky families were involved in one way or another.

Joke is also searching for databases and information about the places where the passengers on the ship prepared for the trip (hachshara).  Already known is a database for training farms in Germany.

Some people did their hachshara in Villers-la-Ville, Belgium.  Because a lot of the passengers on the Dora came to Belgium from Austria and Poland, they might have done their hachshara in Poland and Austria, so a list of those locations would also be helpful.  Probably the majority of the passengers did the hachshara somewhere, but this is not definitely known.

If you know of any information which could be helpful to Joke's research, please contact her at stansjoke@hotmail.com.

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The father of SFBAJGS board member Preeva Tramiel created a shelter for Jews to hide in toward the end of World War II, somewhere near Munkacs or Kaschau or in between.  She is looking for names of and information about people he saved.  Does anyone have parents who escaped the camps by hiding in a building used by the Germans to repair vehicles?  Or have you heard a story about the shelter?  If so, please contact Preeva at preeva@sfbajgs.org.

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Stephen Ankier is conducting research on the massacres in Słonim, Belarus during World War II.  He would like to hear from anyone who was a witness to the massacres in Słonim, who has relevant reliable information or documents about those events, or who has information about events that occurred in Słonim prison.  He is particularly looking for documents and photos that can be shared showing the names of any voluntary auxiliary policemen who worked for the Nazi SS in Słonim — in the prison or transporting prisoners from the prison to the death pits or active executioners — during the period 1941–1944.

Any assistance is appreciated, as even one small fragment of information can often lead to others.  If you can help, contact Stephen Ankier at sia@medreslaw.com.

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Michael Waas, a Master's candidate in Jewish history at the University of Haifa, is looking for individuals to participate in a study of Western Sephardi paternal DNA lineages.  Thanks to a generous grant, testing kits will be provided at no cost to participants.  Eligible men are those who are direct paternal-line descendants of the Western Sephardi community.

What is the Western Sephardi community?  The Western Sephardim were arguably the original transnational people in the age of Imperialism and Colonialism, transcending religious boundaries and empires.  Western Sephardim had significant communities in Amsterdam, London, Livorno, Venice, Bordeaux, and Southwest France and their daughter communities in the New World in Curacao, Suriname, and North America.  Western Sephardim also went to the Ottoman Empire, most notably to Izmir, Salonika, and Tunis.

Anyone who is of direct paternal descent from those communities is eligible.  Michael himself is part of the testing cohort, representing the Vaz Lopes family of Bordeaux and Amsterdam.  As part of the testing, he will also need an accurate paternal genealogy, with as much information as each participant can provide.

The goal of this project is to try to shed light on the origins of the Western Sephardi community and to establish a strong dataset of DNA results, grounded in strong archival research and results that could lead to further intensive studies of Sephardim.

The aim is to have at least 50 men tested for the project.  It is planned to publish the results of the study.  Participants' privacy will be protected.

Please contact Michael if you are interested in participating or know someone who might be eligible.  He is happy to answer any questions!  His e-mail address is mwaas1989@gmail.com.

More Newspapers Online!

I have found many new links over the past few months to add to the Wikipedia online newspaper archives page.  The links include three new country listings (two of which are just correctly classifying existing links) and one new state for the U.S.  The big winner this time is Hungary, with five additions.  Several of the new collections are subscription, but most are free.

• Ontario, Canada:  The Newmarket Public Library (in the York region of Ontario) apparently provided ten newspapers to create the Newmarket's Digital Newspaper Project (free).

• China:  In 2014 the complete North China Daily News, 1850–1951, was digitized, but only three years were available, and those through a ProQuest subscription.  Now it appears that access to the entire collection is available.  This is a paid site and might be institutional only.

• England:  The Daily Mail for 1994 to the present can be freely read.

• England:  The Teesdale Mercury, an independent newspaper from County Durham, has been digitized for 1855–2005 (free).

• Germany: Der oberschlesische Wanderer is online at two sites, one German (33 years between 1833 and 1936) and one Polish (42 years between 1828 and 1938), with different coverage between the two.  Both are free and have images only with no search.

• Hungary:  The Arcanum Digitheca has ten newspapers and is a pay site.

• Hungary:  Zalai Közlöny ("Zala Gazette") for 1862–1945 is free.

• Hungary:  Eger, a magazine with political and other content, has been digitized for 1863–1944 (free).

• Hungary:  The Hungaricana Library has several newspapers and can be used with an English or Hungarian interface (free).

• Hungary:  The Middle and Eastern European Digital Forum has about a dozen German-language newspapers covering the 18th–20th centuries (free).

• Iran (new country!):  A collection at the University of Manchester has been digitized for three historical periods (free).  A recent article discusses the collection and its importance.

• Ireland:  The Ballymun Concrete News was a local paper published from 1998–2006 that emphasized positive stories about its area, a Dublin neighborhood (free)

• Isle of Man (new category) - The Manx Newspapers and Publications site, which includes World War I German-language internment facility newspapers, was formerly listed under England (pay).

• Northern Ireland (new category):  Two Belfast links were moved from Ireland and into a new Northern Ireland subheading under the United Kingdom (free).

• Poland:  The Lodz/Litzmannstadt Ghetto Chronicle was not actually a newspaper, but it has detailed information about the day-to-day events in the ghetto (free).

• California:  The Clovis Roundup has two online archives, one a monthly listing on the paper's site and the other via Issuu (free).

• California:  Newspapers from the Glen Park neighborhood have been added to the collection of San Francisco neighborhood papers available on the Internet Archive (free).

• California:  An obituary index for Tulare County for 1859–2012 is available through the Tulare County Genealogical Society (free).

• Iowa:  The Daily Nonpareil for 1857–1964, which was digitized by NewsBank, can be read online by Council Bluffs Library cardholders.

• Michigan:  The Caro Area Public Library has placed the digitized Tuscola County Advertiser for 1868–1942 on a site with Caro High School yearbooks for 1922–2006 (free).

• Missouri:  Newspapers.com, the online newspaper site owned by Ancestry.com, has digitized the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 1874 to the present as a pay service.

• Missouri:  On the other hand, the St. Louis Public Library has free obituary indices for the Post-Dispatch for 1880–2014 and for the St. Louis Argus, a historical black newspaper, for 1915–1919, 1921–1927, and 1942–1945 for free.

• New Jersey:  The Asbury Park Press for 1905 to the present has also been digitized by Newspapers.com as a pay service.

• New Jersey:  The Plainfield Public Library has an obituary index for the mid-1920's through the mid-1980's for the Courier News available as PDF downloads (free).

• New York:   Obituary indices for the Suffolk Times (1920–present) and for obituaries found in the Gildersleeve scrapbooks (1915–1982) are online courtesy of the Mattituck-Laurel Library (free).

• New York:  The Queens Library has The Wave of Long Island for 1896–1900 online with somewhat limited flexibility of access (free).  Click the link, click the plus sign by "Newspapers and Periodicals", then click the plus sign by "The Wave of Long Island" to see the individual years.

• North Carolina:  The Salemite, the student newspaper for Salem College, a women's college in North Carolina, is online for 1920–1990 (free).

• Ohio:  The Ottawa County Exponent for 1897–1957 is online at the Oak Harber Public Library (free).

• Pennsylvania:  The University of Pennsylvania newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, is online for ranges of years between 1885 and 1995.  I believe the plan is eventually to digitize all years.

• Texas:  Another student newspaper, The Lariat of Baylor University, has been digitized for 1900–2015 (free).

• Washington:  Green River Community College's newspaper, the Green River Current, is available from 1965, the year the college was founded, through 2015 (free).

• West Virginia (new state!):  The first item for West Virginia is an obituary index for Parkersburg and Wood County newspapers for 1841–1890, 1896–1902, and 1930–2007 (free).

Other Newspaper News

It isn't digitized, but it's worth noting that the only known surviving copy of The Colored Enterprise, dated December 15, 1897 (issue #15), was discovered when a time capsule in Asheville, North Carolina was opened in June 2015.  An article about the discovery said the newspaper and other items in the time capsule will be held in a collection at the state archives.

Another Round of Newspaper Links

I have the 1976 disco song "More, More, More" going through my head, because that's what is happening with newspaper archives:  More and more of them are being posted online, which is a great thing for genealogy researchers.  And we still always want more!  While I haven't been able to catch up to adding all of the links to the Wikipedia newspaper archive page, this is a list of the current additions, several of which are university student newspapers.  There is one new country represented:  Vietnam.  Oh, and all of the new links are free!

• Hungary:  An archive of newspapers from South Hungary covering 1910–1945 is now available.
• California:  The Contra Costa County Historical Society has an online index of obituaries from about 1855–1920, mostly from the Contra Costa Gazette.  The society also offers to mail you a copy of an obituary you find in the index.
• California:  Stanford University's Stanford Daily is available from 1892–2009.
• California:  The University of California at San Francisco's student newspaper, Synapse, is online from 1957–2013.
• Georgia:  Three historic Savannah newspapers — Savannah Georgian (1819–1856), Savannah Morning News (1868–1880), and Savannah Republican (1809–1868) — have been added to the Digital Library of Georgia database.
• Georgia:  The Southern School News (1954–1965), which reported on desegregation issues across the South, has also been added to the Digital Library of Georgia.
• Hawaii:  Another extensive collection of Hawaiian-language newspapers is online.
• Illinois:  The Bloomington (DuPage County) Public Library has an online obituary index that includes downloadable PDF's of many of the obituaries.
• Illinois:  The North Suburban Library, near Chicago, also has an online obituary index (index only, though) that covers roughly 1880's–1980's.
• Iowa:  The Iowa Old Press site, part of Iowa GenWeb, has transcribed articles from 19th- and 20th-century newspapers throughout the state.
• Iowa:  The cities of Mount Vernon and Lisbon (Linn County) have a searchable and browsable historical newspaper archive on the Cole Library Web site.
• Massachusetts:  The Boston College newspaper collection includes the BC student newspaper; the student newspaper published by Newton College of the Sacred Heart, a women's college; a Boston-area Catholic newspaper; and two additional Catholic-church-related publications.
• Missouri:  The St. Louis Globe-Democrat has an online name (for A–R) and subject index to their morgue of clippings.  The page lists the years covered as about 1930–1986, but a search for "smith" gave results from at least 1920–1998.  This is an ongoing project, with more entries being added to the database.
• New Jersey:  The New Brunswick Free Public Library has two newspapers available free, New Brunswick Daily Times and Daily Home News, that are also available on a paid site.
• New Jersey:  The Papers of Princeton collection includes the Daily Princetonian, Local Express, Princeton University Weekly Bulletin, and Town Topics, covering 1876–2013.
• New York:  The Columbia Spectator student newspaper from Columbia University is online from 1877–2012.
• New York:  Cornell University's student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, can be read from 1880–1981.
• New York:  The Vassar College student newspaper collection includes seven publications and covers 1872–2013.
• Ohio:  Kent State University's student newspapers from 1939–1969 can be read online.
• Ohio:  Wright State University's student newspaper, The Guardian, is available online for the years 1965–1982 and 2012–2013, with more to come.
• Virginia:  The Library of Virginia has an extensive collection of newspapers, ranging from 1809–1999 and including more than 65 titles.
• Virginia:  The Collegian, the student newspaper of the University of Richmond, is online from 1914–2013.
• Multistate:  Japanese internment camp newspapers from World War II are available on Densho.
• United States:  The American Legion has an online archive of several of its publications, including American Legion Weekly, American Legion Monthly, American Legion Magazine, and The American Legion.  The latter is available for 2003–2011, while the first three are said to cover 1919–1949.
• Vietnam:  The National Library of Vietnam has a collection of digitized newspapers covering 1890–1955.  The site is in Vietnamese.

Some big news:  Two new states, Nevada and South Dakota, have been awarded federal grants to digitize their historic newspapers, which will then be added to the Library of Congress Chronicling America newspaper database.  Some South Dakota newspapers are already available on Chronicling America, and I look forward to seeing Nevada newspapers in the future.  Only thirteen states are not yet partners in the program.

Don't forget, if you find an online newspaper collection that isn't on the Wikipedia page, please add it, so it's easy for everyone to find!

More IAJGS Conference: Days 3 and 4

I'm still here at the IAJGS conference, and I am happy to report that I had much better luck starting on Tuesday with the sessions I attended.  There were still a couple of duds, but nothing like the disasters of the beginning of the conference.

Some of the presentations have been particularly good.  The standout for me on Tuesday was Jane Neff Rollins, who spoke about finding and using labor union documents for genealogy research.  My great-grandfather was in unions and supported them, plus my aunt's uncle (I do research for family members also) was prominent in his union.  Rollins gave an excellent overview of several types of records that possibly could be found, but it will depend on the specific union and what records it saved.  I would be thrilled to find my great-grandfather in union membership lists, meeting minutes, photographs, or a conference agenda, which are just some of the items that were suggested.  Of course, one of the difficult things is finding where these records might be held, but the University of Connecticut has a page with links to several labor archives around the country.  Those are not the only places union documents might be, but they're good places to start.

Another interesting talk on Tuesday was the story of a Jewish man in Russian Latvia who helped fight for Latvian independence but ended up dying in a Latvian prison during World War II.  Not only did the speaker, Eric Benjaminson, explain several of the more unusual documents that he obtained regarding his cousin's history, he also tried to present a plausible perspective of the Latvians who helped this process along its way.  While that part of his talk was obviously conjecture, I have not seen that included in a presentation before.  He was trying to give a broader view of the history.  His ability to look at the other side's perspective might be related to his thirty years of experience as a diplomat.

I also heard a great talk from Vivian Kahn about 2,000 years of Jewish history in Hungary.  The only disappointment on Tuesday was a lecture by someone whose point seemed to be less to transmit information than to share his anger.  I decided I didn't want to be angry all day also and left early.

Wednesday was not quite at the same level as Tuesday but still informative.  The most useful presentation was about researching Canadian family from outside Canada.  Marion Werle talked a little about the history of Jewish immigration into Canada and then covered a broad range of records that exist, including all the normal ones plus some others, such as colonization records and 1940 national registrations.  Not all of them are actually available to people outside Canada (unless they are Canadian citizens), but she even suggested some ways to deal with that restriction.  She also listed sites on which many records can be found.

It wasn't a presentation, but I led a very productive meeting of Jewish genealogical society newsletter editors.  One of my volunteer positions is IAJGS communications chairman, and the main responsibility is working with the newsletter editors.  This past year I unfortunately was not able to keep up with that as well as I would have liked, but I was really inspired by some of the ideas suggested at the meeting.  One idea I hope to implement is making sure that all newsletters and journals have an index of articles published over the publication's history, possibly hosted on the IAJGS Web site.  Too many genealogy articles don't get enough publicity and disappear too soon, and an article index would help prevent that wealth of information from being forgotten.

I spent a few hours in the resource room on Wednesday searching in ProQuest historical and newspaper databases.  On one day of the conference ProQuest allows access to the databases, most of which are not available as personal subscriptions.  The resource room is usually packed on ProQuest day, with a line waiting at the door.  I don't know what happened, but I never saw a line and the room was never full.  On the other hand, I found very few articles, so maybe I'm not the only who has mined those databases pretty thoroughly already.  But it's still great that we have access for a day.

The other presentation I heard on Wednesday was by Rose Feldman of the Israel Genealogy Research Association.  She spoke about the Jewish Legion and other Jews in Eretz Israel (Palestine) during World War I and a little later.  IGRA researchers have been trying to locate as many documents as possible that document the participation of Jews in Palestine during the war.  They are still discovering documents in unexpected archives but hope to find even more,

Looking forward to two more days of conference, and then some research at the Family History Library before I head back to California!

Earlier commentary on the conference:
Days 1 and 2

New Links on the Wikipedia Newspaper Page

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Dr. Henry Snyder, who was the driving force behind the creation of the California Digital Newspaper Collection.  It was fascinating to hear the lengths he went to in collecting old newspaper collections to be digitized.  So I'm dedicating this newspaper update to him.

The latest additions to the Wikipedia page are a wide-ranging lot.  I'm happy to report that all of these new links are free!

• Canada:  The Oxford County (Ontario) Library has birth, marriage, and death indices for three Ingersoll newspapers, ranging from 1854–1970.  One of the newspapers has scanned images; the other two have transcriptions.
• France:  Information Juive (1948–1977) is a Jewish newspaper that has been added to the National Library of Israel site.  It's also listed under Israel.
• Hungary:  Helyi Lapok ("local cards" seems to be the literal translation) has newspapers from Esztergom and Pápai ranging from 1854–2007 (nonconsecutive years).
• Israel:  The Palestine Bulletin (1932–1950) was added to the National Library of Israel online collection of newspapers.  I have also cross-listed newspapers in the collection that were published in other countries under those countries, which created entries for Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco.
• Poland:  Der Moment is a Jewish newspaper that was published in Warsaw from 1910–1924.  It's another new addition from the National Library of Israel and is listed under Israel also.
• Russia:  Ha-'Am (1916–1918), published in Moscow, is also from the National Library of Israel.
• Illinois:  The Chicagoan (1926–1935) was a magazine modeled after the New Yorker.  The online collection is almost complete; if you happen to have one of the missing copies, I'm sure they'd like to hear from you!
• Oregon:  Four newspapers from The Dalles ranging from 1861–1948 have been added to the Historic Oregon Newspapers collection.
• Oregon:  The Northwest Heritage Index at the Wilsonville Public Library lists people and places, mostly from Clackamas County and other Oregon locations, and includes more than 16,000 obituaries from Canby newspapers covering more than 100 years.  The entire database has about 20,000 entries, and plans are to add more material.
• Virginia:  The Prince William County Public Library has digitized several newspapers from 1721–1986 (nonconsecutive years).
• Multistate:  Since Google changed the search interface for its News Archive, the archive hasn't been anywhere near as useful as it used to be, simply because it's harder to find articles.  I've updated the link to one that gives a listing of all the newspapers available through the archive.  The new link also has a basic search capability.

This isn't online, but it's an interesting item.  BBC is planning a drama about a World War I trench newspaper called The Wipers Times.  A British regiment found a printing press and created the newspaper to entertain themselves.  And "Wipers" was the way the British pronounced the Belgian city of Ypres.