Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Tuesday's Tip - A Digital Newspaper Archive Database - UPDATED

This week's Tuesday's Tip is:  Use a Digital Newspaper Archive Database in spreadsheet format to find digitized newspapers for your community of interest.

Genea-Musings reader Ronny emailed two weeks ago offering me a spreadsheet that he compiled from the holdings of several online digitized historical newspaper providers, such as Ancestry.com, GenealogyBank, Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive, Elephind, Old Fulton Postcards, Google News Archive, and others.  If the newspaper is at a commercial site, you need a subscription or you could find a library that provides access to the site.

Ronny noted in his email:
"I got tired of hunting various sites to figure out if a town I was hunting had any newspaper archives available so I made a spreadsheet that now has over 13,000 collections, mainly from Genealogy Bank, Newspapers.com, Newspaperarchive.com, Ancestry.com, Old Fulton Post Cards, Google News Archives and Elephind. Though there are a few others included as well. I don't have a web site but would love to share the collection with others. I think if more people utilized newspaper archives, it would help break down some brick walls. "
He wanted me to somehow make it public and offer it to the genealogy world for him without charge to users.  I thought this was a great idea, and after a little thought, I uploaded it to a Google Drive file, and made it shareable.

 The updated link is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1cdsFRokSx_RnpqUjQwanJvNlk/view?usp=sharing



When you open the link, only the first page of the spreadsheet shows up (I'm not an expert at Google Drive, apparently!).

There is a download icon at the top of the page (the down arrow icon) where the complete spreadsheet can be downloaded to your computer.  The file size is 1.430 megabytes.  It downloads as an .xlsx file, which most spreadsheet programs should be able to read.

When you open the file in your spreadsheet program (I use LibreOffice Calc), the top of the spreadsheet starts with Alabama newspapers in alphabetical city order:


Line 13,461 of the spreadsheet is for Wright, Wyoming:


The column headings are:

A:  State
B:  City
C.  County
D:  Title
E.  Date Range
F:  Earliest Date
G:  Latest Date:
H:  Site (with link to the website, not the specific newspaper)
I:  Pay Site or Free
J:  # of Issues
K:  Items

This is offered to Genea-Musings readers free of charge and as is.  It may or may not be updated in the future.

NOTE:  Some of the links in the "Site" are incorrect.  I will try to get Ronny to fix them.

My thanks to Ronny for creating this spreadsheet - this was a labor of love, and is freely offered to Genea-Musings readers.

UPDATE 13 May 2015:  On 12 May 2015, Miriam J. Robbins, who has the Online Historical Newspapers website with similar content to Ronny's spreadsheet, was concerned that Ronny had copied some or all of her information to his spreadsheet.  When I was notified of this, I took this blog post down until the issue could be resolved.  Ronny informed me and Miriam that he had deleted Miriam's data from his spreadsheet before he sent it to me (and others), and that none of Ronny's information included Miriam's information.  Miriam double checked this, and found that this was the case.  So I am reinstating the blog post.

Ronny updated the spreadsheet after I noted that some of the links were erroneous, and the updated spreadsheet has been substituted for the first one in the link above.  The updated link is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1cdsFRokSx_RnpqUjQwanJvNlk/view?usp=sharing

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/05/tuesdays-tip-digital-newspaper-archive.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

13 comments:

KevinW said...

This is so awesome! Thanks guys!

FamilyFilmFabricFood said...

This is perfect timing for me as I focus on newspapers this year. Thanks so much.

Quilting Tangent said...

Thank you!

GeneGinny said...

What a wonderful resource. Thank you, Ronny and Randy.

Mike said...

Wow, tell Ronny s/he is awesome!

Miriam Robbins said...

This was not 100% Ronny's work. He emailed me some time ago and said he had copied much of the information from my website to his spreadsheet. My website consists of hours and hours of work and my personal research of these sites, and not simply copying and pasting newspaper titles and dates. I told Ronny he was NOT to merge my information with his database and certainly not to email my work to others. This is a direct violation of copyright.

ttps://sites.google.com/site/onlinenewspapersite/Home/

Dona said...

Thank you, this is a great resource, along with Miriam's site as well. Newspapers really help add to the data we find on our ancestors, and add flavor!

Cunningb2 said...

and I hope Miriam profusely apologized to both Randy and Ronny - she's also welcome to say sorry here for accusing folks of stealing information which HAD NOT happened

Bonnie said...

Here is a link for papers from seymour iowa - not on the list - I didn't check Miriam's list.

http://seymour.advantage-preservation.com

Cindy said...

Both of these lists miss one important source of online newspapers - your local library. Public libraries offer these resources at no cost to their patrons and often make them available for patrons to use from home. And often, the entire run of a newspaper, not just a few years, is available. My local library, for example, offers the Washington Post back to 1877, when it first started publishing, and all years in between. The Baltimore Sun is available back to its first issue published in 1837.

Janet M said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Janet M said...

Here is one that isn't on the list. It's for Quincy, Illinois. Through their library system. Anyone can access it. You do not have to be a member of the library to access the files. Here is direct link: http://quincylibrary.org/newspaper-archive/

Cathi at Stone House Research said...

Thank you for sharing this!