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| Library of Congress - Chronicling America |
Michael provides us with an update on doing research with newspapers. This post draws primarily on Genealogy’s Star by James Tanner. Posting used by written permission received by Michael. You might also want to check back with Michael's Family History Learning Moment, entitled "Michael Reads the Newspapers."
Most genealogists have a somewhat fixed research methodology. They begin their research using the same documentary resources over and over again. In the United States, they almost uniformly use the U.S. Census records for any research back to 1850. The next layer of research usually extends to vital records and, on occasion, some military records such as World War I and II Draft records.
This is also reflected by the way the major websites' genealogical search engines respond to searches. For example, Tanner notes that he searched on FamilySearch.org for William Travis Gilmore, b. 1894, d. 1977. The records that came up as a result of the search included death records, a World War I Draft Registration record, a World War II Draft Registration record, U.S. Census records, and marriage records. How many people go beyond this level of research? Not many.
Obviously, FamilySearch did not come up with any newspaper records because except for a few collections of obituaries and another few collections of newspaper records specifically about obituaries, there aren't a lot of newspaper records on the website. The other major online genealogy programs, with the exception of MyHeritage.com, have newspaper collections in separate websites beyond paywalls that do not allow those with regular subscriptions to the main record websites to search without paying extra for additional subscriptions. Hence, Ancestry.com has Newspapers.com for fees that can be as high as almost $150.00 a year. Findmypast.com also has additional charges, up to almost $240.00 per year for access to the British and Irish newspapers. Some of these websites are free in Family History Centers and at the Brigham Young University Family History Library.
These larger collections of newspapers are really only a very small percentage of the number of online digital newspaper archives. For example, here is a link to a list of hundreds of websites: Wikipedia: List of online newspaper archives. Some years ago, Tanner did a list of U.S. newspaper websites and he notes he was overwhelmed with the number of websites, most of which were free. See Online Digital Newspaper Collections by State -- The Lists by State. Cyndi's List and various other genealogy blogs also have lists. In all these cases, it isn't surprising that some of the hundreds of site links change or go dead, even for newspapers that remain in publication, since these companies are always looking for more licensing revenues. A supplemental search with Google will often turn up a "new" address for a newspaper collection whose link didn't work.
What is sad is that even though there are millions of pages of digitized, searchable newspapers online, there is so little use of these resources by genealogists. In one more example, Tanner mentioned MyHeritage.com. MyHeritage has integrated millions of searchable newspaper pages, including the Library of Congress's Chronicling America resources in its full data subscription price. In any event, various newspaper collections available through Pacific Northwest libraries is summarized on our own NBGS Blog, here.
Steve A adds another couple of notes here.
- There is little standardization about how to search for things amongst the various collections of newspaper pages. You just have to try things.
- James Tanner didn't tell us in his post more about William Travis Gilmore, though he undoubtedly found out more himself, such as the minor traffic accident Gilmore experienced in Brownwood, Texas, in 1966. Damage was about $200.
