​For Wisconsin newspaper researchers - Good News!  12 new titles totaling over 85,000 pages have been added to the Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers. The new titles and dates are listed below.

​The "Not So Good News" is that the Archive is behind the Badger Link firewall, which means that you have to be a Wisconsin resident in order to search the archive.

In any case, the new titles that have just been added are:

• Baraboo Republic (Baraboo) 12/16/1858-4/21/1886
• Brodhead Independent (Brodhead) 2/27/1861-8/30/1900
• Hartland News / Hartland News and Dairyman (Hartland) 9/22/1894-12/25/1920
• Jefferson County Union (Lake Mills) 3/24/1870-6/27/1890
• New London Press/Press of Waupaca and Outagamie County (New London) 7/20/1893-12/26/1906
• New London Times (New London) 10/3/1856-4/161858, 1/18/1879-9/11/1891
• Prairie du Chien Leader (Prairie du Chien) 7/18/1857-7/19/1860
• Prairie du Chien Union (Prairie du Chien) 3/18/1864-10/22/1896
• Rib Lake Herald (Rib Lake) 1/3/1902-6/25/1920
• Tri-County Record (Kiel) 10/10/1918-12/26/1940
• Waupun Times (Waupun) 9/17/1857-10/2/1883
• Yellow River Pilot (Pittsville) 11/5/1897-10/14/1904
• Sugar River Recorder/Belleville Recorder (Belleville) 12/20/1889-12/30/1904

If you are lucky enough to be a Wisconsin resident and have a BadgerLink login, these added historical newspaper pages will hopefully be a great source for your research.

Have you ever tried to do research of old historic newspapers from your Smartphone?  I have and it is quite difficult. Most newspaper search sites are not mobile-compatible.

But thanks to Revgenea Software's new app, you can do just that. Currently it allows you to search Chronicling America and its collections (currently at 11 million pages).

I was approached by Revgenea's Bill Nelson a couple of months ago and was asked if I would do some beta testing of the new app. After a month or so of going back and forth with a few bugs (rapidly fixed) and suggestions, the app in my opinion is outstanding.

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Here is a summary of this feature-rich app. For a complete discussion go to OldNews USA - Features

1. You can set a research goal, such as a geographical location or date range
2. There are basic and advanced search features
3. Searches are saved so you can use an old search, modify it, or create a new search
4. Just like Chronicling America, search terms are highlighted in the results
5. Search results can be ordered by relevance or date
6. For every image page or clipping saved, a source citation is automatically created and saved
7. A search research log is maintained
8. A Google map of each title is available, so that you can see titles nearby to your chosen geographic location
9. Images and citations can be saved to or shared with many different storage places, such as DropBox, Goggle Drive, Evernote, etc.
10. Many more...

More information can be found at Revgenea.com

This app is definitely worth your time.

Full Disclosure - There really is nothing to disclose.  I have no relationship with Revgenea.  My only interest is to further the ability for genealogists and family history researchers to have good tools available to research their ancestors in old, historic newspapers.

​The largest online historical newspaper collection in the state of Indiana is  the Hoosier State Chronicles online collection. The collection now has over 250 titles and is nearing 1 million online pages.

Recently 11 more titles were added and over 17,000 more issues are now available for searching:

• Crawfordsville Record (1834-1836, 105 issues)
• Crawfordsville Review (1853-1899, 961 issues)
• Crawfordsville Daily Journal (1890-1894, 1540 issues)
• Crawfordsville Weekly Journal (1853-1902, 1747 issues)
• Greenfield Republican (1889-1915, 933 issues)
• Indiana State Sentinel (1874-1894, 712 issues)
• Jasper Weekly Courier (1858-1922, 3232 issues)
• Lake County Times (also published as Hammond Times) (1910-1922, 3025 issues)
• [Terre Haute] Daily Wabash Express (1861-1890, 4854 issues)
• [Terre Haute] Semi-weekly Express (1896-1897, 204 issues)
• Terre-Haute Weekly Express (1867–1872, 259 issues)

​So if you are researching your Indiana ancestors - this is a great place to start.  Additional online collections can be found here: Indiana Online Historical Newspapers Summary

​Good luck!

For those of you who visit this website to find links to free online historical newspapers, you likely visit the Newspaper Research Links page.

In all of those 17,500 links (yes - that many) there are some links to collections from Hathitrust, which I have written about before, and which is a partnership of academic and research institutions offering collections with millions of pages that can be searched for free.  It is similar to Google Books in function. Today, while taking another look at the main Hathitrust site, I searched the catalog for newspapers and found 189 newspaper titles in the collection.  I know for sure that all of the newspaper titles available are not in the Newspaper Research Links page (yet).

The other observation is that about 70% are from the U.S. and a majority are from the 1700s and 1800s.
If you are researching older newspaper titles, I would advise you to check out the following link:

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Search/Home?type%5B%5D=all&lookfor%5B%5D=newspaper&filter%5B%5D=format%3ANewspaper&page=9&ft=ft&page=10

You will be presented with the 189 titles and on the left sidebar you can further hone in by location, decade, language, etc.

Many of the titles are short- runs (i.e., not many years) but it may be worth your time to search these "older" collections, which may not be online anywhere else.

Good Luck!

​Two important announcements that will make some terrific additions to Chronicling America.  The first adds 4 new states and additions to 10 existing state collections.  The second announcement increases the span of years covered by the collection.

Announcement 1

The National Digital Newspaper Program in conjunction with the National Endowment of the Humanities - has just awarded 14 grants totaling over 3 million dollars.

4 new states will be added to Chronicling America - Alaska, Colorado, Maine, and New Jersey.  In addition, grants to add updates for 10 existing states have been awarded to Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas.

So look forward in the coming year for new collections and updates that will be added to the Chronicling America collection.

The complete announcement can be found at:

Alaska, Colorado, Maine, and New Jersey Join the National Digital Newspaper Program

Announcement 2

​The Library of Congress and the National Endowment of the Humanities in a joint announcement, are expanding the years available in Chronicling America by way of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

You can read the entire Announcement or read some of the excerpts below:

"Expanding on our current scope (1836-1922), the program will now begin to allow state partners to digitize historic newspapers from 1690 to 1963."  State partners must prove that any included digitized newspapers published after 1922 are not covered by copyright.

"By including the very first American newspapers, we can explore the history of the early days of the republic.  In the twentieth century, the number of newspaper publications exploded and papers themselves grew in both length and scope.  By extending the coverage of NDNP back to 1690 (when Benjamin Harris and Richard Pierce published the first American newspaper in Boston) and forward to 1963, we hope to capture the richness and diversity of our nation’s history."

"Chronicling America is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between NEH, the Library of Congress, and state partners.  Over 11 million pages are currently available on the website, with more being added all the time." 

"NDNP currently has thirty-nine state partners and one territorial partner.  NEH awards enable state partners to select for digitization newspapers representing their states’ historical, cultural, and geographic diversity."  
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​​Great news for genealogy researchers searching for articles in U.S. historic newspapers.