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!

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.