Showing posts with label Michigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michigan. Show all posts

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!

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

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.

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.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Newspapers, Newspapers, Newspapers . . . .

It's time for another round-up of the latest additions to the Wikipedia online newspaper archive pageAdvantage Preservation has been on a binge of digitization lately, so more newspapers seem to be coming online every day, which is great for us researchers.  And almost all the new links are free, which is even better.

Belgium:  The Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (Royal Library of Belgium) has uploaded free digital images of newspapers dating from 1831–1918.  The site is in French, Dutch, and English, and some of the newspapers are in German.  Newspapers from 1919–1950 are indexed and appear in search results, but due to copyright issues, those images are not free.

Canada:  I found a trove of Mennonite links.  There are links to indices for death notices and obituaries in five Mennonite newspapers, and an author/subject index for one of the newspapers (which was published in in the United States for a time and so also shows up in the Multistate list).

China:  The Shanghai Echo, a periodical for Jewish refugees who had fled Europe, is online for 1946 to 1948.

England:  The Foxearth and District Local History Society has posted transcribed selections from newspapers in the East Anglia area.

England:  Spare Rib, a feminist publication, has been digitized and uploaded in its entirety.

England:  A book was published with a detailed index of The (London) Times of 1863, and that book is available online as a downloadable PDF.

Ireland:  Ancestry.com has created a new newspaper site, IrishNewspapers.com.  I wonder if this means it's trying to go back to the pricing model it used to have, where you could pay for different databases separately.

Poland:  There is an index to death notices published in Nasz Przegląd ("Our Review"), a Polish-language Zionist newspaper that was published daily in Warszawa from March 1923 until August 1939.

Russia:  This is another Mennonite resource.  Someone created an index of Mennonite-relevant stories in the German-language Odessaer Zeitung ("Odessa Newspaper").

California:  The Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County has an index to early local newspapers, available as PDF files.  I don't see that the index tells you which paper an entry is from, but maybe I'm just overlooking it.

Georgia:  The Uncle Remus Regional Library System, which covers six counties (but not the ones I'm researching, of course), has several newspapers available online, courtesy of Advantage Preservation.

Indiana:  The New Albany–Floyd County Public Library has an index to local newspapers for 1847 to the present.

Indiana:  The obituary index for the Plymouth Pilot Daily is downloadable as several PDF files.

Iowa:  Ten newspapers from Dickinson County have been digitized by Advantage Preservation.

Massachusetts:  The first 30 years of the Boston Jewish Times are available courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Michigan:  More than one million subject index cards from the Detroit News are available on the Seeking Michigan site.

Michigan:  The Milford Public Library not only hosts an obituary index for the Milford Times for 1929–1949, but they will provide you a free copy of the obituary when you find one you want.

Michigan:  This one's a little unusual.  A cemetery has the local newspaper, the Petoskey News Review for 1874–2001, on its site.

Montana:  The student newspaper for Bozeman High School for 1939–2015 is available online, courtesy of Advantage Preservation.

Montana:  Montana State University is in the process of placing digital copies of its student newspaper, the Exponent, online.  Not everything is there yet.

Nebraska:  Advantage Preservation worked with the North Bend Public Library to digitize three local newspapers there.

New Jersey:  Ten early Plainfield newspapers running from 1837–1918 are on the Plainfield Library's Web site.

New Jersey:  The Rockaway Township Free Public Library has the Iron Era and Rockaway Record available online.

New York:  Allegany Public Library and Advantage Preservation teamed up to put four Allegany newspapers online.

New York:  The Troy Irish Genealogy Society has added a marriage notices index to complement its Lansingburgh newspapers death notices index.

North Carolina:  The Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper for Duke University, is online but only for the 1960's and 1980's.

Ohio:  A collection of newspapers printed by the Wright Brothers has been digitized and is available on two sites, Dayton Metro Library and Wright State University.

Tennessee:  An obituary index for the Nashville Tennessean for 1964 to the present is on the Nashville Public Library's site.

Multistate:  The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia hosts an index for about 200,000 obituaries.  There is no indication on the site what years this covers.

Multistate:  MennObits has transcribed obituaries from Mennonite newspapers from 1864 to the present.

I hope you find some great information in at least one of these newspapers!

Saturday, December 13, 2014

It's That Giving Time of Year: World War I and II, Missouri Death Certificates, Vishniac Photos, Kilts, and More

It seems there are always more genealogy projects and mysteries that volunteers can help with, doesn't it?  I'm posting some of these later than I planned to, but all still appear to need assistance or answers.

More large institutions are turning to crowdsourcing to make information available.  The Smithsonian opened its Transcription Center to public input this past July.  After having digitized many handwritten documents, volunteers are now sought to transcribe the often difficult-to-read writing.  As with most such projects, each document is transcribed by multiple volunteers to try to ensure the highest accuracy.

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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is also following the trend.  The museum has worked with the International Center of Photography in New York to digitize and place online the work of photographer Roman Vishniac.  Many, probably most, of the existing captions did not name the individuals in the photos.  If you can give names to previously unidentified photos, your help is wanted.  Visit the Vishniac collection and see if there's someone you know.  If you recognize a person or a place, click the link below the photo to send a message.

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Now this is a project made for family historians.  To help commemorate the centennial of World War I, the New York Times is asking people to share stories of their ancestors' roles during the war, along with the efforts made to learn about those stories.  So instead of just the bare facts, you can tell about the research you did and where you went to find out what happened to your great-grandfather.  One woman's story about her grandfather, who fought on the German side, is online.

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Every January 2, under Missouri state law, the Missouri State Archives receives another year's worth of death certificates from 50 years previous.  The archives processes and scans the certificates, and then volunteers do a transcription marathon.  It takes the volunteers only about four days to transcribe and check the year's worth of certificates, around 50,000–60,000 images.  The archives usually adds the images and the transcribed entries to the death certificate database by the middle of February.

Volunteers work from the comfort of their own homes, as with the FamilySearch Indexing program.  Also similar is that each record is transcribed twice and then checked.  If they don't match, however, a third person transcribes the record.  If none of the transcriptions match at that point, a staff member reviews the certificate.  Unlike FamilySearch, this program has no software you must download, but you do need to create a free account.

Mary Stanfield is the eVolunteer Project Coordinator.  If you or your society is interested in participating this January to transcribe 1964 death certificates, or if you have any questions, contact her at archvol@sos.mo.gov.

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The Jews of Frankfort DNA Project is both a regional and a surname Y-DNA project.  Male participants are sought who are Jewish; have a surname found in Frankfort/Worms in the 16th century; and have a documented lineage back to a male ancestor in the 16th century or earlier living in Frankfurt, Worms, Mainz, Alsace, Prague, Vienna, or another major Jewish center.  If you fit the criteria, the project would like you to take a Y-DNA test at Family Tree DNA and submit the results.  More information, including the known list of surnames, is available on the project Web site.

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A Glasgow seamstress sewing a kilt intended to be part of a World War I uniform included a note tucked into the stitching.  It's possible that Helen Govan was looking for a future husband:  "I hope your kilt will fit you well, & in it you will look a swell. If married never mind. If single drop a line. Wish you bags of luck, & a speedy return back to Blighty Town."  Now that the note has been discovered, the family that owns the kilt is searching for descendants or other relatives of Govan to learn more about her and the reason she included the note.

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A man who purchased a World War I medallion, and his father, are now trying to determine to whom the medal belonged.  They have done some research and learned that six men who served on the SS River Clyde at Gallipoli earned the Victoria Cross and this medallion, which was given by the Imperial Merchant Service Guild for bravery.  You can read the story of the men's service here.  The names of five of the men are included in the article.

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An online Michigan newspaper has been searching for the 39,000 World War II veterans it estimates are still alive in Michigan at the present time.  MLive created a database to share the veterans' names, photographs, and experiences and to honor their service.  The big push was to include information by Veterans Day, but information is still being sought.  An announcement about the project is available, and the database and submission form can be found here (scroll down for the submission form).

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At the Battle of Bannockburn, the outnumbered forces of Robert the Bruce defeated the English army of King Edward.  The 700th anniversary of the battle has passed, but if you believe you are descended from one of the men who fought there, researchers would still like to talk to you and help you determine if your ancestor was there, using modern DNA techniques.  Stewarts and McDonalds particularly are encouraged to contact Graham Holton, who was the head of the family history project for the anniversary.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

More Newspaper Links!

Here's another batch of links that have been added to the Wikipedia newspaper archives page.  I'm a little behind schedule on posting because of some recent health problems (just had surgery this morning!).  This is another interesting group, with more university student papers.  And all of the new links are free!

• England:  The Illustrated London News has posted an archive for the News and seven additional titles covering the years of 1914–1919, in conjunction with the World War I centennial.

• Ireland:  The Church of Ireland Gazette has added 1914 to its online archive.

• Alabama:  The University of Montevallo has a collection of newspapers from Montevallo and Shelby County.  So far there are five titles, with plans to add more.

• California - The Berkeley Public Library has an index to obituaries that were published in the Berkeley Daily Gazette.  The obituaries range from 1894–1979, but several years are not included.

• California:  The B'nai B'rith Messenger has been added to the collection of Jewish newspapers available from the National Library of Israel.

• California:  The Sacramento Public Library has purchased a digital archive of the Sacramento Bee for 1900–1983.  Currently the years 1940–1959 are online, with the rest to be added over the next four years (1960–1969 in 2015, 1970–1979 in 2016, 1980–1983 in 2017, and 1900–1939 in 2018).  You must have a Sacramento Public Library (available to all California residents) to use this NewsBank database.

• Illinois:  The Chicago Sentinel, which had a broken link for a while, is no longer hosted at the Spertus Institute but has become part of the Illinois Digital Archives.

• Illinois:  The Rock Island County Illinois Genealogical Society has posted obituary indices for the Rock Island Argus and Quad City Times for 2005–2013.  They will send copies of obituaries for a small fee.

• Iowa:  The Fort Dodge Public Library has a collection of 54 newspapers and two directories online.

• Michigan:  The Loutit District Library has searchable databases for birth announcements (1891–1959, 2001–present) and obituaries (1891–1979) from the Grand Haven Tribune.  These are indices only.

• Michigan:  The Flat River Community Library has two Greenville newspapers online for free:  the Greenville Independent (1857–1923) and the Daily Call (1922–1923).

• Missouri:  Scenic Regional Library in Franklin County has been working with the state historical society to digitize many historical newspapers from the area.  Currently fourteen newspapers from three counties, covering 1875–1950, are available.

• New Jersey:  An index to death announcements published in the Elmer Times from 1901–1940 is available from the Gloucester County Historical Society.

• New York:  A collection of fourteen newspapers from the Hudson River Valley, ranging from 1831–2013, has been put online.

• New York:  The Tompkins County Public Library has several newspaper indices available as PDF's.

• North Carolina:  The first 70 years of the Technician, the student newspaper from North Carolina State University, are now searchable and browsable online.

• Ohio:  The Tuscarawas County Genealogical Society has two index databases of death notices and obituaries, for 1954–1967 and 2003–2011.

• Oregon:  The student newspaper for Willamette University, the Collegian, has been digitized from 1875–2012 and put online.

• South Carolina:  The Richland Library has an obituary index for 1875–present for the Columbia area.

• Texas:  The Calhoun County Genealogical Society has created an index for local birth, engagement, and marriage announcements and obituaries, for the letters A–M.  They will send copies of items for a nominal fee.

Have you found a great item in the newspaper recently?

Monday, November 25, 2013

Recent Updates to the Wikipedia Newspaper Archive List

I didn't realize it had been a few months since I had posted about the latest links I have added to the Wikipedia newspaper archives page, but the timing worked out well — this is my 500th post!   I never would have guessed I could write so much about genealogy.

• The first addition to talk about isn't actually an archive link, it's a search engine.  Elephind (which I added under "Worldwide", since it searches sites from Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States) is a free mega search for newspaper archive sites.  It never hurts to have another finding aid.

• Ireland:  The Church of Ireland Gazette has a current online archive for 2005–2011 and has posted the complete run of the newspaper for 1913 (free)
• United Kingdom:  Many issues of Colburn's United Service Magazine are available on HathiTrust; issues often listed births, deaths, etc. (free)
• United Kingdom:  Historical Newspapers has an index to the New York Times and two indices to the London Times (pay)
• Alabama:  The Alabama Citizen, a (mostly) weekly Birmingham newspaper, apparently complete from November 10, 1913 through August 10, 1918 (free)
• Alabama:  The Huntsville–Madison County Public Library online index to obituaries in its newspaper collection, currently covering 1819–2006 (free)
• Alabama:  The Tuscaloosa News, scattered issues from 1910–2000 (free)
• Colorado:  Scanned obituaries from the Fort Collins Coloradoan from 1988–2002,  courtesy of the Larimer County Genealogical Society (free)
• Indiana:  Elkhart Public Library index to obituaries in the Elkhart Truth from 1921–present (free)
• Massachusetts:  Lincoln Public Library obituary index from 1959 to "recent" (free)
• Michigan:  Name index to Dziennik Polski (Polish-language Detroit newspaper), 1904–1941; the search page uses Steve Morse's One-Step tools (free)
• Pennsylvania:  Altoona Area Public Library birth (1931–2011) and obituary (1929–present) indices (free)
• Pennsylvania:  Kutztown University database of the Kutztown Patriot, the local newspaper, with articles from 1889–1940 (free)

Don't forget, since this is Wikipedia, you also can add links to online newspaper archives that are not listed.  If you don't want to, send links to me and I will be happy to add them to the page.