Online Historical Newspapers

Alabama, British Columbia, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina New Pages and Updates

2012-01-14T20:41:00.000-08:00

Here are new pages and updates from mid-November 2011 to the present:

New Pages

British Columbia, Canada - with 26 titles from the University of British Columbia (free)

New Jersey - with six titles from the Millburn Free Public Library (free) and 41 titles from GenealogyBank ($)

Updates

Alabama - two new titles from Jacksonville State University (free)

California - expanded dates for Evening Tribune (San Diego) from 1898-1933 to 1895-1933; title found at GenealogyBank ($)

Connecticut - one new title from Genealogy Bank ($)

Florida - expanded dates for Tampa Tribune from 1926-1933 to 1895-1933; title found at GenealogyBank ($)

Georgia - expanded dates for Augusta Chronicle from 1881 - 1917 to 1792-2003 and Marietta Journal from 1985 - 1988 to 1868 - 1998; both titles found at GenealogyBank ($)

Illinois - added Broad Axe for Chicago from GenealogyBank ($)

North Carolina - 17 new titles from the DigitalNC Collection (free); 14 new titles from GenealogyBank ($)

Canada - now with four out of 13 provinces and territories linked

United States - now with 47 out of 51 states and the District of Columbia linked. Only Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, and West Virginia remain. Yes, they have newspapers; I just haven't gotten to them yet!

Wyoming Newspaper Project Now Complete

2011-12-19T10:04:00.000-08:00

I received the following from the Erin Kinney, Digital Initiatives Librarian at the Wyoming State Library:

On December 15th, the Wyoming Newspaper Project reached a milestone--the last reel from the last drive was loaded. That drive had 44 supplemental microfilm reels, and over 21,000 new pages. The Wyoming Newspaper Project now has 791,764 full pages loaded. Much of the new content fills in gaps in coverage, but there are many new titles as well. Unfortunately, for many of the new titles, only a handful of issues survived to be microfilmed and added to this project.

The Wyoming Newspaper Project now has all of the newspaper microfilm reels for 1849-1922 that the Wyoming State Archives has in their collection. We are aware that there are gaps in coverage and newspaper titles that are not included in the project. We are building a list of newspaper titles and years that we know about through researchers like you, to be on the look out for to see if we can add them to the collection. We have partnered with the Library of Congress to scan and microfilm the Wyoming newspapers that are in their collection, so look for those in the coming months.

Also, if you find anything amiss (a page that is mislabeled, search highlights not working, trouble getting a search to work or a page to print) feel free to contact me. [erin.kinney@wyo.gov]

Note from Miriam: I have not yet updated the Wyoming page of the Online Historical Newspapers site yet, so if you think there is a title from the Wyoming Newspaper Project that is not showing, just go directly to that site itself.

South Dakota and Wisconsin New Pages

2011-11-13T14:10:00.001-08:00

Here are the latest new pages:

South Dakota - with eight titles from GenealogyBank

Wisconsin - with one title from The Timber News

Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, and Wyoming Updates

2011-11-13T13:57:00.001-08:00

Here are updates from late August to the present:

United States - two new states added (South Dakota and Wisconsin), bringing the total to 45 out of 50 states

Alabama - four new titles from Birmingham Public Library; 19 new titles from GenealogyBank

California - three new titles from the Torrence Public Library; one expanded and five new titles from GenealogyBank

Colorado - two new titles from GenealogyBank

Connecticut - one new title from GenealogyBank

Florida - one new title from GenealogyBank

Georgia - one new title from GenealogyBank

Idaho - one new title from GenealogyBank

Illinois - three new titles from GenealogyBank

Indiana - six new titles from Switzerland County High School

Missouri - four new titles from the Southeast Missourian

North Carolina - one new title from the DigitalNC Collection

Wyoming - four new titles from GenealogyBank

Kansas Historical Society to Digitize 100,000 Pages of Newspapers

2011-08-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

From the Topeka Capital-Journal:

Kansas has been awarded additional funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue its participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program, according to Kansas Historical Society officials.

As a result, the Kansas Historical Society will digitize an additional 100,000 pages of Kansas newspapers, dating from 1836-1922.

Read the rest of the article here.

NEH Announces $3.8 Million for 2011 NDNP Awards, Including Three New States

2011-08-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

From the Library of Congress:

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced on July 27, 2011 awards totaling $3.8 million to 13 institutions representing their states in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Three of these institutions - Indiana State Library, State Historical Society of North Dakota, and the West Virginia University Research Corporation - are new to the program this year. Ten other institutions - the University of Illinois-Urbana, Kansas State Historical Society, University of Kentucky-Lexington, Louisiana State University, Minnesota Historical Society, Montana Historical Society, Oklahoma Historical Society, University of South Carolina, and the University of North Texas - have received continuing awards to contribute additional content to the program. This funding will support the selection and digitization of historic American newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 by each participating state, according to NDNP guidelines. The Library of Congress (LC) will make these newspapers available to the public through the Chronicling America Website (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) beginning in mid-2012. In all, 28 states have institutions participating in the program.

NDNP, a partnership between the NEH and the LC, is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of all U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. The NEH grant program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.

I'm a Guest on GeneaBloggers Talk Radio!

2011-08-12T01:14:00.001-07:00

I'm honored to be one of two guests being interviewed on Thomas MacEntee's GeneaBloggers Talk Radio tonight, Friday the 12th, from 7:00 to 8:00 PM, PDT. The topic will be "Read All About It! Newspapers as Genealogy Resources." The other guest will be Thomas J. Kemp, of GenealogyBank and ObitsArchive. I'll be highlighting my Online Historical Newspapers website. You can listen online, call in (number is listed in the link below), and/or chat with other listeners on the site. If you can't make it, you can come back and listen later. The link to the show is here. Come join us!

News from Google News Archive and Chronicling America

2011-05-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

Google News Archive is ending their newspaper digitization project:

We work closely with newspaper partners on a number of initiatives, and as part of the Google News Archives digitization program we collaborated to make older newspapers accessible and searchable online. These have included publications like the London Advertiser in 1895, L’Ami du Lecteur at the turn of the century, and the Milwaukee Sentinel from 1910 to 1995.

Users can continue to search digitized newspapers at http://news.google.com/archivesearch, but we don’t plan to introduce any further features or functionality to the Google News Archives and we are no longer accepting new microfilm or digital files for processing. [Hat tip to John D. Reid of Anglo-Celtic Connections]

A link to browse individual historical titles is at http://news.google.com/newspapers, and from there you can search the individual newspaper. I will continue to add these titles to my Online Historical Newspapers website. It does take time, and I am currently nearly finished with the titles beginning with the letter A.

---

Meanwhile, the Library of Congress' Chronicling America project continues in full swing:

Last week, the Library of Congress updated the Chronicling America Web site with more than 230,000 additional newspaper pages in various titles. The site now provides access to more than 3.7 million searchable newspaper pages from 506 newspaper titles, published in 22 states and the District of Columbia between 1860 and 1922.

These titles are also being added and updated on my site. Keeps me busy!

México and Ciudad de México New Pages

2011-04-16T16:01:00.002-07:00

Here are the new pages of links to Mexico Online Historical Newspapers:

Mexico - with one out of 31 states and one federal district linked

Ciudad de México - with one new link to Google News Archive

Australia, Australia Capital Territory, New South Wales, Northern Terrritory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia New Pages

2011-04-16T16:01:00.001-07:00

Here are the new pages of links to Australia Online Historical Newspapers:

Australia - with eight out of nine states/territories linked

Australia Capital Territory - with two new titles from Australia Trove

New South Wales - with 24 new titles from Australia Trove

Northern Territory - with seven new titles from Australia Trove

Queensland - with 13 new titles from Australia Trove

South Australia - with nine new titles from Australia Trove

Tasmania - with 14 new titles from Australia Trove

Victoria - with one new title from Google News Archive and three new titles from Australia Trove

Western Australia - with 11 new titles from Australia Trove

Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Québec New Pages

2011-04-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

Here are the new pages of links to Canada Online Historical Newspapers:

Canada - with three out of 13 provinces/territories linked

New Brunswick - with one title from Google News Archive

Nova Scotia - with one title from Google News Archive

Ontario - with one title from Google News Archive

Québec - with 29 titles from Google News Archive

Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington New Pages and Updates

2011-04-16T16:00:00.000-07:00

I have been adding quite a bit of links to the website the past four months, but have not taken the time to list the new pages and updates. It really is amazing how many digitized newspapers are out there, and how quickly various institutions, organizations, and businesses are adding more and more to the Internet each week!

New Pages

Idaho - with three titles from Google News Archive

Indiana - with two titles from Google News Archive

Iowa - with six titles from Google News Archive

Rhode Island - with one new title from Google News Archive

Updates

Alabama - one new title from Google News Archive

Arizona - updated three titles from the Library of Congress with more years of coverage; added two new titles from the Library of Congress, and one new title from Google News Archive

Florida - one new title from the University of Florida and three new titles from Google News Archive

Georgia - one new title from Google News Archive

Illinois - one new title from Google News Archive

Kansas - 13 new titles from the Library of Congress and 39 new titles from GenealogyBank

Louisiana - five new titles from Google News Archive

Maryland - six new titles from Google News Archive

Michigan -28 new titles: one from the Commerical Record, seven from Google News Archive, 13 from GenealogyBank, two from Footnote, one from the Salem-South Lyon Digital Archives, two from the Rawson Memorial Library, one from the Making of Modern Michigan, and one from the Ann Arbor District Library

Montana - two new titles from Google News Archive

North Carolina - three new titles from Google News Archive

Ohio - one new title from Google News Archive

Oklahoma - three new titles from Google News Archive

Pennsylvania - three new titles from Google News Archive

Texas - one new title from Google News Archive

Washington - one new title from Google News Archive

Online Historical Newspapers Galore!

2010-12-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

If searching through online historical newspapers for your ancestors and relatives to enhance your family tree is a fun past time, you'll be excited to hear that two major online historical newspaper websites made some great changes this week. And to sweeten the news, both resources offer the digitized newspapers for FREE!

First off, I happened to be working on my Online Historical Newspaper site, adding historic titles from Google News Archives from a .pdf file that one of my website users had kindly put together and sent me. The frustrating thing about Google News Archives is that up until recently, you could not easily find historic titles on their site. Article searches would produce results that included both current news articles (single article in text format only and most being pay-for-view) and historic articles (digitized whole historical newspapers - free to view). There was no comprehensive list of the digitized whole historical newspapers, so you usually only found a historic title if you knew the name of the paper and did a comprehensive search. If you were looking to find a historic title for an ancestral location, but did not know if one existed for that area, or what its title was, you pretty much were out of luck.

That changed this week. While I was working on my site and looking at one of the digitized historic titles I was lucky enough to find, I noticed a link in the upper right corner of the page: "Browse all newspapers." My initial thought was that this would simply take me back to the Google News site, with mostly current, pay-for-view titles. But to my surprise, it was a comprehensive linked list of all the historic titles in Google News Archive, with the dates of coverage!

I have only two beefs with this list: the first is that it does not list publication location of these titles; you must go in and view the paper and find the location on its masthead. The second is that you cannot download the pages or print from the site. You can, however, use your computer's Print Screen function. I hope to cover that in another post.

The second major website is the Library of Congress' Chronicling America site, which made the following announcement this week:

On December 15, 2010, the Library of Congress added more than 440,000 historic newspaper pages to the Chronicling America Web site. This most recent update expands date coverage for many titles already represented in the site and includes a wealth of content in new titles from Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. The site now includes more than 3.1 million pages from 414 titles published between 1860 and 1922 in 22 states and the District of Columbia.

Since I have already added many of the Chronicling America titles to my Online Historical Newspapers site, I went in to take a closer look. On average, most of the changes are expanded years to existing titles and one or two more new titles for each state. Of course, all this is a good thing!

I am working hard to add all these new titles and updated expansions of years to my Online Historical Newspapers site, and hope the site will prove useful to your research by facilitating and narrowing your hunt!

Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Montana, New York, and Washington New Pages and Updates

2010-12-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

I have been adding new information to the website, but have neglected to send out updates. Here's what's new:

New Pages

Alabama - with one title from Google News Archive

Connecticut - with five titles from Google News Archive

Delaware - with one title from Google News Archive

Montana - with one title from the Montana Memory Project

Louisiana - with six titles from the Library of Congress

Updates

United States - now with the District of Columbia and 31 out of 50 states linked

California - one new title from Google News Archive; new county added: Butte

Florida - three new titles from Google News Archive

Illinois - 49 new titles: one from the Quincy Public Library, 37 from GenealogyBank, seven from Footnote, one from the Chicago Public Library, two from the UIUC Historical Newspapers Online, and one from the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection. New counties include Clinton, Douglas, Fayette, Gallatin, Hancock, Logan, Madison, Marion, Menard, Moultrie, Piatt, Rock Island, Sangamon, St. Clair, and Winnebago.

Michigan - one new title from Google News Archive; new county added: Shiawassee

New York - six new titles: two from Old Fulton on New York Postcards and four from the Rochester Regional Library Council

Washington - ten new titles: two from Google News Archive, one from the Washington Secretary of State, and seven from the Library of Congress. New counties include Benton and Kittitas.

Ancestry.com to Acquire iArchives

2010-09-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

Press release from Ancestry.com announcing plans to buy iArchives, which includes Footnote.com:

Leading Brand for American Historical Content

PROVO, Utah, September 23, 2010 – Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM) announced today it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire iArchives, Inc. and its branded Web site, Footnote.com, a leading American History Web site, for approximately $27 million in a mix of Ancestry.com stock, cash and assumption of liabilities. This acquisition will provide the company with a complementary consumer brand, expanded content offerings, and enhanced digitization and image-viewing technologies.

iArchives digitizes and delivers high-quality images of American historical records of individuals involved in the Revolutionary War, Continental Congress, Civil War, and other US historical events to Footnote.com subscribers interested in early American roots. iArchives has digitized more than 65 million original source documents to date through its proprietary digitization process for paper, microfilm and microfiche collections.

“Footnote.com is highly complementary to Ancestry.com’s online family history offering,” said Tim Sullivan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ancestry.com. “By promoting Footnote to our Ancestry audience, we hope to expand its reach among researchers who care about early American records. iArchives also brings outstanding image-viewing technology and content digitization capabilities that will improve our leadership position in bringing valuable historical records to the market. We welcome the iArchives team to the Ancestry.com family.”

Upon completion of the transaction, iArchives will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ancestry.com. As part of the transaction, Ancestry.com currently expects to issue approximately 1.0 million shares of common stock. The transaction is subject to various closing conditions and is expected to close early in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Ancestry.com also announced today that its Board of Directors has approved a share repurchase program of up to approximately $25 million of its common stock. Under the authorization, share repurchases may be made by the Company from time to time in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions depending on market conditions, share price and other factors and may include accelerated or forward or similar stock repurchases and/or Rule 10b5-1 plans. Part of the rationale for the repurchase is to offset dilution of equity resulting from the iArchives acquisition. No time limit was set for the completion of this program. The share repurchase program may be modified or discontinued at any time by the Board of Directors.

About Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with approximately 1.3 million paying subscribers. More than 5 billion records have been added to the site in the past 13 years. Ancestry users have created more than 19 million family trees containing over 1.9 billion profiles. Ancestry.com has local Web sites directed at nine countries, including its flagship Web site at www.ancestry.com.

About iArchives
iArchives is a leading digitization service provider that also operates Footnote.com, a subscription Web site that features searchable original documents, providing over 35,000 paying subscribers with a view of the events, places and people that shaped the American nation and the world. At Footnote.com, all are invited to come share, discuss, and collaborate on their discoveries with friends, family, and colleagues. For more information, visit www.footnote.com.

Forward-looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or to future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as "appears," "may," "designed," "expect," "intend," "focus," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "should," "continue" or "work" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements include statements concerning among other things, the proposed transaction between Ancestry.com and iArchives, Inc., including the consummation and anticipated timing of the transaction as well as the expected benefits of the proposed transaction, and the effects of the proposed transaction on Ancestry.com, our subscriber base, our reach, our activities to enhance subscribers' experience, our business outlook, our leadership position and our opportunities and prospects for growth. These forward-looking statements are based on information available to us as of the date of this press release. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include a variety of factors, some of which are beyond our control. In particular, such risks and uncertainties include the risk that the transaction does not close when anticipated, or at all; difficulties encountered in integrating acquired businesses and retaining customers, and the additional difficulty of integration when continuing the acquired operation; the adverse impact of competitive product announcements; failure to achieve anticipated revenues and operating performance; changes in overall economic conditions; the loss of key employees; competitors’ actions; pricing and gross margin pressures; inability to control costs and expenses; and significant litigation.

Information concerning additional factors that could cause results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements is contained under the caption "Risk Factors" in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended June 30, 2010, and in discussions in other of our SEC filings.

These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date and we assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

More Newspapers Added: 380,000 Pages Added to Chronicling America, Including Pages from Three New States (LA, MT, SC

2010-09-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

From the Library of Congress:

On Sept 16, 2010, the Library of Congress added more than 380,000 historic newspaper pages to the Chronicling America Web site, including newspapers from 3 new states - Louisiana, Montana, and South Carolina - and expanding the site's time coverage further into the Civil War era. The site now includes almost 2.7 million pages from 348 titles published between 1860 and 1922 in 22 states and the District of Columbia.

Chronicling America is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.... Read more about it!

Links to these newspapers will be added to the Online Historical Newspaper Website soon!

Alaska, Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio New Pages and Updates

2010-07-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

New Pages:

Alaska - my newest state page is Alaska, with eight titles from GenealogyBank, 24 titles from NewspaperArchive, and one title from Tundra Times. This makes 26 states plus the District of Columbia that are now available for US papers.

Updates:

United States - now with 26 states plus the District of Columbia linked

Michigan - one new title from the Farmington Community Library

North Carolina - one new title from the Washington County, NCGenWeb site

Ohio - one new title from the Cleveland Jewish News

Wyoming New Page

2010-06-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

I've just added a page for the state of Wyoming, with 186 titles from the Wyoming Newspaper Project! This makes 25 out of 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, that are now linked from the United States page!

Recent Updates and New Pages for Titles Digitized by the LOC

2010-06-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

I recently checked the Library of Congress' (LOC) Chronicling America website and found there were numerous titles I needed to update (the availability of years for a particular title) or add to my website. Corrections are where I've found errors in my original listings and made the necessary changes

New Pages:

Kansas - with five titles from LOC

Oklahoma - with one title from LOC

Oregon - with one title from LOC

Updates:

United States - now with 24 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia linked

Arizona - 10 new and four expanded titles from LOC

California - one new, two expanded, and one corrected title from LOC

District of Columbia - three new, six expanded and one corrected title from LOC

Hawai`i - eight new titles from LOC

Illinois - one title from LOC - this is a new state for Chronicling America titles!

Kentucky - four new, 10 expanded, and four corrected titles from LOC; also two new and three corrected titles from Kentuckiana Digital Library

Missouri - three new titles from LOC

New York - one new and one expanded title from LOC

Ohio - nine new and one corrected title from LOC

Pennsylvania - two new and one expanded title from LOC

Texas - one expanded title from LOC

Utah - four new, two expanded, and one corrected title from LOC

Virginia - seven new and one expanded title from LOC

Washington - seven new and one expanded title from LOC

Win a One-Year Subscription to Archives.com, Footnote.com, and NewspaperARCHIVE.com

2010-05-28T06:11:00.000-07:00

I've been a long-time subscriber to Woman's Day magazine and receive their e-newsletter as well, which usually includes various contests to win vacations, jewelry, cosmetics and the like. Imagine my surprise yesterday morning when I saw their featured contest was a one year's subscription to Archives.com, which includes access to partners Footnote.com and NewspaperARCHIVE.com!

While Archives.com does not have digitized newspapers in its collection, obviously, NewspaperARCHIVE.com does. And Footnote.com also has a newspaper database, compliments of SmallTownNewspapers.com. So if you are looking to access some great newspaper collections, this contest may be of interest to you. Ten lucky winners will be drawn after the contest ends July 24th. No purchase necessary. Go here to enter.

British Library and brightsolid Partnership to Digitise up to 40 Million Pages of Historic Newspapers

2010-05-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

British Library and brightsolid partnership to digitise up to 40 million pages of historic newspapers

Mass digitisation to make millions of newspaper pages available online and in the Library’s reading rooms
Innovative deal will help safeguard the future of the world’s greatest newspaper archive

The British Library’s Chief Executive, Dame Lynne Brindley, will today announce a major new partnership between the Library and online publisher brightsolid, owner of online brands including findmypast.co.uk and Friends Reunited. The ten-year agreement will deliver the most significant mass digitisation of newspapers the UK has ever seen: up to 40 million historic pages from the national newspaper collection will be digitised, making large parts of this unparalleled resource available online for the first time.

Spanning three centuries and including 52,000 local, regional, national and international titles, the British Library holds one of the world’s finest collections of newspapers. Each year the Newspaper Library at Colindale is used by 30,000 researchers in subjects ranging from family history and genealogy to sports statistics, politics and industrial history. This vast resource is held mainly in hard copy and microfilm, necessitating a trip to the north London site for people wishing to use the collection.

The partnership between the British Library and brightsolid will enable the digitisation of a minimum of 4 million pages of newspapers over the first two years. Over the course of ten years, the agreement aims to deliver up to 40 million pages as the mass digitisation process becomes progressively more efficient and as in-copyright content is scanned following negotiation with rightsholders.

Delivering the keynote speech at the Westminster eForum this morning (Wednesday 19 May), Dame Lynne Brindley outlined how the partnership will transform access to this vital part of the national memory.

“I am delighted to announce the British Library’s partnership with brightsolid to embark upon the most significant programme of newspaper digitisation this country has ever seen,” said Dame Lynne.
“Historic newspapers are an invaluable resource for historians, researchers, genealogists, students and many others, bringing past events and people to life with great immediacy and in rich detail. Mass digitisation unlocks the riches of our newspaper collections by making them available online to users across the UK and around the world; by making these pages fully searchable we will transform a research process which previously relied on scrolling through page after page of microfilm or print. brightsolid have an excellent track record of digitising archive materials and making them available to new audiences – I look forward to announcing the web service resulting from this partnership, which will launch and then steadily grow from next year.”

Digitised material will include extensive coverage of local, regional and national press across three and a half centuries. It will focus on specific geographic areas, along with periods such as the census years between 1841 and 1911. Additional categories will be developed looking at key events and themes such as the Crimean War, the Boer War and the suffragette movement. The aim will be to build a ‘critical mass’ of material for researchers – particularly in the fields of family history and genealogy.

brightsolid, a subsidiary of Dundee-based publisher DC Thomson, was selected following an EU procurement process. brightsolid has previously delivered the highly successful 1911census.co.uk project in partnership with The National Archives (TNA) and owns the leading family history resources findmypast.co.uk and genesreunited.co.uk. brightsolid is taking on the commercial and technical risks of the project, with no direct costs to the British Library. The firm will digitise content from the British Library Newspaper Library, which it will then make available online via a paid-for website as well as integrating it into its family history websites.

This resource will be available for free to users on-site at the British Library and copies of all scanned materials will be deposited with the Library to be held in the national collection in perpetuity.

Chris van der Kuyl, Chief Executive of brightsolid, said: “We’re delighted to be working with the British Library on such an exciting project. Digitisation will mean that those people who haven’t previously been able to access the physical resource will now be able to access it from anywhere at any time. In particular it is an important resource for the genealogy community, which we are closely involved with through our brands findmypast.co.uk and genesreunited.co.uk, helping them to bring to life how their ancestors lived. It will also offer a unique insight into major events and key periods of historical interest.

“We’re also closely linked to the publishing community through our parent company, DC Thomson and we very much see this project as a collaboration with the industry. In fact we are already in dialogue with some rightsholders and expect this to continue throughout the project. As a business, our core strength is in building innovative online businesses around people and places, and this project fits perfectly within our expertise. We are looking forward to working with the British Library on this project and developing this hugely important online resource.”

Along with out-of-copyright material from the newspaper archive – defined in this context as pre-1900 newspaper material – the partnership will also seek to digitise a range of in-copyright material, with the agreement of the relevant rightsholders. This copyright material will, with the express permission of the publishers, be made available via the online resource – providing fuller coverage for users and a much-needed revenue stream for the rightsholders.

David Fordham, President of the Newspaper Society said: “This initiative is a hugely significant and exciting development which will unlock many of the great newspaper treasures that lie within the millions of pages in the British Library Newspaper archive at Colindale. It represents a particularly exciting opportunity for regional newspapers which have a long and rich heritage and capture changing times in local and regional areas across the centuries. I look forward to watching the project develop and hope that it makes a major contribution to the industry.”

The successful appointment of brightsolid as its newspaper digitisation partner will help the British Library to fulfil its strategic goals of long-term preservation of and access to the national newspaper collection. The Library’s newspaper strategy aims to secure the future of this unique resource by moving the hard-copy collections from the current building at Colindale to a purpose-built storage facility in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire. Access to the collection will be provided via microfilm and digital copies made available at the Library’s main site at St Pancras.

“The success of our 19th Century British Library Newspapers website demonstrated the public’s huge appetite for digitised historic newspaper content,” added Dame Lynne. “Our new partnership with brightsolid will enable us to deliver a huge increase in the amount of digitised material available – transforming access and searchability for users on and off-site and reducing wear-and-tear on our often fragile collection items. It will help the newspaper collection to remain relevant for a new generation of researchers, more used to accessing research information via their laptop than travelling to a physical location.”

She concluded: “The British Library’s newspaper archive is one of the world’s great newspaper collections. Through this partnership with brightsolid we will make millions more pages accessible – and to many more people.”

Historical Newspapers For Free on Footnote During May

2010-05-06T20:36:00.001-07:00

I just received an announcement from Footnote.com. During the month of May all the historical newspapers on Footnote.com will be open to the public. A free registration is needed to view the images.

To access the newspaper collections visit www.footnote.com/newspapers.

On Footnote you will find newspapers ranging from small towns to major cities and dating back to the 1700’s. Whether a historian or a genealogist, historical newspapers are one of the best resources that provide a unique window into the past.

Browse Issues in Google News Archive

2010-04-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite genealogy bloggers, Taneya Koonce, sent me a link to her post at the North Carolina GenWeb project, highlighting the Browse feature of Google News Archive.

While I still am not impressed with Google News Archives' setup (you can't at all easily browse for titles by location - you must know the name of the newspaper first), I am delighted that at least a step has been taken in the direction of making browsing known titles a little easier!

Scanned papers at Google News Archives appear to be free, unlike links to articles they list in search results that may or may not be included in their archives: some are linked to subscription website NewsBank, others to the newspaper websites' for-pay archives. Dick Eastman has a link of some scanned papers here at his blog, but I do know this list is not comprehensive.

You can help me out by e-mailing me or commenting below when you find your favorite scanned titles at Google News Archives. Please include the link to the browsable title. As I receive this information, I'll get these titles added to the website.

New Colorado Page!

2010-04-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

Check out the new Colorado page!

Thomas and I worked on this page together. There are 164 titles, if I counted them correctly...and all are free, thanks to the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.

Enjoy!

More Illinois Titles

2010-04-12T23:05:00.000-07:00

Thomas has added 10 more titles to the Illinois page. Three are from the Quincy Public Library, two are from the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection, two are from the Illinois Digital Archives, and there is one each from the Center for Research Libraries, Hyde Park Herald, and Digital Past.

Adding Links Not Available to Public

2010-04-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

My experiment failed. To my knowledge, it is not possible for the public to add their comments to pages on my website. I apologize for the inconvenience. From my perspective, when I was signed in as webmaster, it looked like once comments were enabled, anyone could comment. Unfortunately, it is only the webmaster and approved collaborators (such as Thomas) that can do so.

So I removed the comments that said "Please list your links below". I kept the comments I put up that listed links to other newspaper sites until we can get them all properly placed on the pages. There are a number for Illinois and Pennsylvania that I listed this morning in the comments sections at the bottom of the pages.

Thank you for your patience and your patronage. Happy Hunting!

15 Atlanta Titles Added

2010-04-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

I've just added 15 new Atlanta titles to the Georgia page. These are all free, courtesy of the Digital Library of Georgia.

Enjoy!

95 New York Titles Linked!

2010-04-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Thomas MacEntee, there are now 95 more free New York newspaper titles linked on our New York page. They are all from the Old Fulton New York Postcard site, which obviously has more than Fulton postcards listed! It's a great site to browse if you have upstate New York ancestors.

Add Your Links

2010-04-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry, the following is not possible. See my update here.

I'm trying a new experiment on the Online Historical Newspaper site. I've added the ability to list your comments on each page of the site. Here you can leave links for other newspaper sites that I have not had time to upload to the pages and help other readers. Please keep the following in mind:

~~1. Leave links to whole digitized newspapers only. Transcriptions, obituary sites, and single articles are not helpful.~~

2. Put the links on the appropriate page. For instance, if you have a link to a site of Michigan newspapers, leave it on the Michigan page. If you have links to a state that I currently don't have a page for (i.e. New Mexico), leave them on the United States page. Leave links to foreign countries (anything non-US) on my home page.

~~3. As I upload links from the comments to the actual page, I will remove the comments to keep the site tidy.~~

4. If I find a lot of inappropriate or off-task comments, or if this experiment just doesn't work well for me, I will remove the comments ability on the site. You can always e-mail me your links as well.

~~Thanks for your help and your patience!~~

Arizona, District of Columbia, and New York Updates

2010-04-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

The Library of Congress has continued to add many titles to its free Chronicling America website. I've linked 9 more titles on my Arizona page and 12 more on my District of Columbia page. Also on those pages, you'll see I've linked 14 titles (Arizona) and 37 titles (DC) from Genealogy Bank, a subscription site.

And I just added 80 titles to the New York page from the free Northern New York Historical Newspapers site (all they currently have listed!). I also added another title from the Hudson River Valley Heritage site. Thomas MacEntee has graciously agreed to collaborate with me, so you may see more New York titles on this page, soon!

District of Columbia Updates and Illinois New Page Added

2010-03-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

Here are the latest new pages and updates. I have been working on a Colorado page, but it is taking some time. Thanks for your patience!

New Pages

Illinois - with two titles, one each from Cook and Barrington Counties

Updates

District of Columbia - two new titles from the WRLC Student Newspaper Collection

US - now with 21 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia linked

Washington State Updates and New Titles

2010-02-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

I've changed the page to reflect that Genealogy Bank has extended the range of available years for the Seattle Daily Times; they now cover 1900 through 1969 (please note that when a newspaper online database lists the number of years covered, it doesn't always mean they actually have every single issue from every single year within that time frame!).

I've also added the Port Townsend Morning Leader from the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection, plus four titles from the University of Washington's Student Newspapers Archive from their Seattle, Tacoma, and Bothell campuses!

Visit the Washington Online Historical Newspapers page here.

Missouri Update

2010-01-29T22:30:00.000-08:00

There are 12 new free titles from the Missouri Digital Heritage website, plus one from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Libraries website. Check them out!

Michigan New Page and New York Updates

2010-01-17T19:38:00.000-08:00

I've added a new page for the state of Michigan. I've also added quite a few New York links for the following counties: Deleware, Erie, Suffolk, and Ulster. I'll be adding even more soon!

Texas, Utah, and Virginia New Pages Added

2010-01-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

OK! I've finally added all the newspaper titles currently available at the Library of Congress's Chronicling America website. I'll continue to monitor the site to update and add titles as they appear. This means that I now have pages for Texas, Utah, and Virginia!

My next project is to start adding the titles of newspapers from websites that so many of you have kindly sent me links to.

Happy Hunting!

Ohio and New York New Pages Added

2010-01-14T23:26:00.000-08:00

There's not much there...yet...but new pages for the states of Ohio and New York have been added to the site. New York has many more awesome online historical papers, so be watching for updates in the future!

Missouri and Nebraska Pages Added

2010-01-10T22:43:00.000-08:00

I've added pages for the states of Missouri and Nebraska, with links to newspapers at the Library of Congress's Chronicling America site. Just six more states (New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Virginia) to go and I'll have them all listed...then on to the many other great resources online!

More Free Kentucky Online Historical Newspapers!

2010-01-06T21:06:00.000-08:00

Thanks to one of my readers, I have discovered even more free Kentucky online historical newspapers! The Kentuckiana Digital Library has lots of great digital resources--not just newspapers--and these include many of the Kentucky papers that the Library of Congress's Chronicling America is digitizing (it's all part of the same project). However, on closer investigation, I discovered that the dates of some of the same papers at the KDL are not always exactly or even inclusive of what the Library of Congress has. Some of the dates of the same papers at KDL are earlier or later than what you see at the LOC. And there are some newspapers at KDL that don't appear at the LOC. So check them out!

Kentucky New Page

2010-01-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

I've just added a new page to the site for Kentucky. Included are links to 51 newspapers digitized by the Library of Congress's Chronicling America project - all free!

This makes a total of 11 links--10 states and the District of Columbia--for my United States page. Many more links and pages to come!

Thank you to all who have e-mailed links to me...keep them coming!

Welcome!

2009-12-27T23:54:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Online Historical Newspapers blog. Here is where I will be posting updates and additions to my new website, the Online Historical Newspapers Website. The site is and will continue to be a work in progress, as so many newspapers continue to be digitized and added to the web. My first goal is to get the papers listed at the Library of Congress's Chronicling America project. I'm adding other free digitized newspapers found at state archives and university websites, and also those at subscription websites, such as GenealogyBank, NewspaperARCHIVES, Ancestry, Footnote, and WorldVitalRecords. If you have a favorite digitized newspaper database, please drop me an email and let me know so I can add it to my site.

Please note that I am not linking to transcribed newspapers, clippings, or obituary sites. My focus is on whole digitized newspapers.

Thanks for dropping by and when you're done checking out the Online Historical Newspapers Website, don't forget to check out my Online Historical Directories Website as well!

Happy Hunting!