Where All The Newspapers Are

02/08/2013

10 Comments

 
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A couple of days ago, I conducted my very first Google+ hangout. The subject was "Researching Newspapers via Online Sites."  For those of us really into discovering our ancestor's life stories, newspapers are indispensable. 

During the course of the Hangout, which lasted about an hour, we discussed 8 different online sites that have repositories available for historic and old newspaper research.  The included:
  • Newspaper Archive
  • California Digital Newspaper Collection
  • Genealogy Bank
  • Historic American Newspapers - Library of Congress
  • Google News
  • Ancestry
  • Newspapers.com
  • Fold3


One of the important takeaways for the participants and a site that I often forget myself is the Library of Congress' list of all the US Newspapers and where they are held - either in libraries, universities etc. This is of course for offline research which is important since only a fraction of all newspapers are online.  

This link from the Library of Congress of the "US Newspaper Directory from 1690 - Present" is extremely helpful.

If you want to find where all the newspapers are - at least offline - this is definitely the place to go.
 


Comments

Jacqi Stevens link
02/08/2013 12:46pm

May I suggest an addition to your newspaper list? While the name may be deceiving, <a href="http://fultonhistory.com/">Old Fulton Post Cards</a> includes a wide variety of searchable newspapers, not only in the New York area, but far beyond--even to Canada! (Despite the second landing page's request to "sign in," that is not necessary. Just use the search box on the left.)

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Kenneth R Marks link
02/08/2013 3:30pm

Jacqi,

Thank you so much for this link. I think I discovered this about 5 years ago. As you know, the interface is not great and there is no "Advanced Search," but I have New York City ancestors and have been searching for the last hour. Unfortunately it i s very slow, but I am not complaining. I will indeed add it to my list.

Kenneth

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Barbara
02/08/2013 5:51pm

Thanks so much for sharing the results of the hangout. There are just not enough hours in the day to attend every genealogy event! (which is good news -- there's lots going on!)

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Kenneth R Marks link
03/04/2013 9:47am

Thank you Barbara for the kind comments. And thanks for visiting my blog!

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Joanne Shackford Parkes link
02/08/2013 8:42pm

Sorry I missed your Google + WEB hangout - will watch for more. Today before I received your blog I was looking for some NJ newspaper sources and happened to find the upenn.edu WEB site which includes a Historical Newspapers Online section. Their WEB site is at http://guides.library.upenn.edu/historicalnewspapersonline. I beleive some of the newspapers on their site are not included in the Library of Congress WEB site (which use at least weekly in my hunt for SHACKFORD genealogy information). There is also a free California newspaper WEB site at http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cdnc which includes newspapers that are not in the Libaray of Congress Website. Often the same news and even the exact same article will appear in a CA newspaper a week or month after it appeared in a NY paper.

Joanne
www.shackfordgenealogy.weebly.com

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Kenneth R Marks link
02/08/2013 10:33pm

Thanks, Joanne. Actually I did cover the California Digital Newspaper Collection in the hangout the other day which is hosted by UC Riverside. I will have to check out the UPenn site though. Thank you for calling it to my attention.

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Mariann Regan link
02/09/2013 12:37pm

Thank you, Kenneth! I'm going to copy the URLs here and use them. I've noticed also that local libraries can sometimes get you article copies online from local newspapers -- at least, I've been mailed several obituaries in that way. Glad you had a good hangout!!

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Kenneth R Marks link
02/09/2013 2:35pm

Mariann,

Thanks. I just completed a video about all the free sites to find newspapers. It is on my YouTube Channel at

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtBZulebfB25jtRJRJ3btiw

Don't think it has finished uploading, but if you subscribe you will see it after it is cooked.

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Lisa
02/09/2013 4:25pm

Thanks for the useful info. Also the comments about NJ..thank you. When I was searching The Library Of Congress site I could not pull up any NJ papers.

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Kenneth R Marks link
03/04/2013 10:48am

You are welcome Lisa. For some reason I have always had difficulty finding much info in New Jersey as well. Good luck!

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