Searching Newspapers Online

This article is one in a series of session reports from the recent BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy. I tweeted the session live, but I hate to send you to Twitter to read them because they appear there in reverse chronological order. I’ve straightened them out for you here. Additions are shown in italics.

Tuesday, 28 July 2009

Barbara Resnick's "Searching Newspapers Online" See her syllabus at www.zroots.com/newspapers.htm  (1:49 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Oh no! Her laptop just did an automatic reboot to install a patch! (1:51 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Some commercial genealogy sites, listed alphabetically: (1:53 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Accessible Archives, Inc. - available at many libraries (1:55 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Ancestry.com - Read the help information on newspaper searching. (1:56 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Helping patrons in FHCs, she’s noticed they have problems refining search with Ancestry.com’s New Search. (1:58 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Too many results mean you need to add search focus [more information]: Geographic, time period, keywords like occupation, organizations. (2:00 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

You can also try adding associated surnames as keywords to find articles about weddings. (2:01 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

[Since both surnames must be present, you’re more likely to get the wedding announcement. The same is true with births; search on given names of father, mother, and child.]

Footnote.com (2:02 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Footnote gives her problems with Internet Explorer. Some sites work better with other browsers. Footnote works better with Firefox. (2:04 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Barbara is showing us browsing newspapers in Footnote.com (2:04 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

She likes footnote's easy browsing system. (2:05 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

She's showing how to use search. (2:05 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Footnote allows pay-per-view. (2:06 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Search for Zucknick returned no matches. She likes their prompting in that situation. Advanced Search has collection dropdown. (2:07 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

GenealogyBank.com (2:08 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

GenealogyBank has 3,800+ newspapers. Two different collections. Historical Newspapers (1690-1980) and America's Obituaries (1977 to current). Adding more fairly often. (2:08 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

1800s, Some 1700s, early 1900s GenealogyBank has better collections for early America vs. Ancestry.com (2:09 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Parent company NewsBank, Inc. is partners with American Antiquarian Society (2:11 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Their search allows Include and exclude keywords. (2:11 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Search also allows searching by when the content was posted. Nice! (2:12 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Institutional version is "America's GenealogyBank" which may not include all content. (2:14 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Mid-Continent Public Library Independence Missouri sells non-resident library cards, gives access to this and other good databases. (2:14 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

http://www.worldvitalrecords.com (2:15 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

WorldVitalRecords doesn't qualify newspaper names with place when needed. (2:16 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Notice different but good advice when no results are found. (2:16 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

In results list, the place names are appended to newspaper name. (2:17 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

WVR newspaper comes from NewspaperARCHIVE.com, SmallTownPapers.com, and plan to add PaperofRecord.com. (2:18 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Now look at non-genealogy, Commercial Information websites. (2:18 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

NewsBank, Inc. (2:19 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Content partners: the American Antiquarian Society, Library of Congress, Wisconsin Historical Society, 3,000+ publishers, 90+ institutions.

One NewsBank product is Readex, available in many research libraries, including

DAR Library in Washington, D.C. (2:20 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Chicago Tribune and Dallas Morning News.

NewsBank obituary collection, same as GenealogyBank (2:20 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

http://www.NewspaperARCHIVE.com (2:21 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

NewspaperARCHIVE.com 842 towns, 250 years, 3,405 titles. (2:21 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

All these sites are growing rapidly. Ancestry adding 30,000 pages per month. NewspaperARCHIVE.com adds 2.5 million pages per month. (2:23 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Search for Resnick the number of results dropped from 234 results a month ago to 230 today. Hmmm. (2:24 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Strong (free) BASIC search and strong ADVANCED search. (2:24 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

ProQuest (2:25 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Often listed at the library under "other" rather than "genealogy." (2:25 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

ProQuest Historical Newspapers. If the library where you use ProQuest has subscribed to all 3 collections, then the one search covers all 3. Otherwise, search covers only the collections the library has. (2:26 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

They don't have thousands of newspapers, but they have large urban newspapers. (2:27 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

20 million pages from 1764 to 2007. They have permission for in-copyright issues. (2:27 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Searchable by article type. Truncation, wildcards, proximity, adjacency, other boolean. (2:28 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Coverage up to 2007. They have permission for in-copyright newspapers. (2:29 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

20 million pages from 1764-2007. (2:30 PM Jul 28th from web )

New ProQuest product: American Periodicals. over 1,100 periodicals. American 19th and early 20th centuries. (2:31 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

ProQuest excellent Black Studies Center includes newspapers. (2:32 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

ProQuest Obituaries, 1851 to current. 10.5 million obituaries. (2:33 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Check other pages and adjacent issues. Sometimes an index will locate a death notice but not an obituary that is also present, or vice-versa. (2:36 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Semi-free websites. (2:36 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Google News Archives. http://news.google.com/archivesearch (2:37 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Search for zuknick locates her wedding announcement in the L.A. Times, Resnick-Zuknick, 1971. This one is pay-per-view. Some are free. (2:38 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Godfrey Memorial Library Low cost. Free at family history centers. (2:39 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

When you travel to another city, check the library for online resources and the availability of non-resident library cards. Sometimes small charge. Sometimes no charge. (2:42 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

NC live .org 16,000 newspapers, journals, etc., 25,000 online books. But must have a NC library card. (2:41 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

In that way, Barbara was able to get access to NewsBank America's Obituaries & Death Notices. (2:42 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Usually can't get non-resident library card remotely. You must be in person. However, you may be able to renew online. (2:43 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Mason City, Iowa Public Library has NewspaperARCHIVES access for free. (2:44 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

The URL is http://www.mcpl.org  (2:44 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Summary: Newspapers can be found on the Internet at: commercial genealogy sites, commercial info sites, and local library sites that are semi-free, free, or almost free. (2:46 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

That's it for Barbara's presentation. (2:48 PM Jul 28th from TweetChat )

Remember that tweets are limited to 140 characters. Less the #byugen hashtag, each tweet could not exceed 132 characters. Hence, tweets often use abbreviations, bad grammar, and lack proper punctuation.