UpFront with NGS: Historic Newspapers

Showing posts with label Historic Newspapers. Show all posts

12 September 2017

Visualize Chronicling America News via US News Map

Visualize Chronicling America News via US News Map

Chronicling America (via the Library of Congress) is a wonderful FREE historic newspaper (1789-1925) archive with an invaluable US Newspaper Directory (1690-present). We have frequently blogged about Chronicling America.

Sometimes the way the search results are presented can be a bit challenging to interpret (especially if there are many “hits”) as you try to “focus” on the results that you think will be most important to your research. To help with this The Georgia Tech Research Institute and Ehistory.org at the University of Georgia created a means to search on Chronicling American and then visualize the results across space and time via their US News Map portal.

Enter a search term and you can see the found articles located on a map and then you can correlate articles by time using that controller.

Lisa Louise Cooke (Genealogy Gems) has a YouTube video illustrating how to use this website.

Slate, via The Vault article Interactive Map Lets You Track How 19th- and Early-20th-Century American Newspapers Covered Any Topic describes this wonderful new website also.

If visually processing information is for you, do check out this website! If you have not yet visited Chronicling America, you now have no excuse not to.

What result most surprised you?

Editor’s Note: Thanks to the Polish Genealogical Society of America (PGSA) for including a mention of this database and the video from Lisa Louise Cooke in the September 2017 edition of its Genealogy Notebook.

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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29 May 2015

It's not too late -- FREE access to Toronto Star (ends 31 May 2015)

Just learned that the Toronto Star Archives has been offering FREE access since May 17!

It’s not too late to check out this neat newspaper!

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Toronto shares ...

Free Access To Toronto Star Archives

The Toronto Star is offering free access to their archives May 17-May 31.

The archive dates covered are January 1, 1894-December 2011 for images.

Searches are by date or subject. To access the archives go to: http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/search.html ...

Read the full blurb here.

Editor’s Note: This really caught my eye as my daughter and I have been watching Murdoch Mysteries (via Netflix) which happens to be set in Toronto and revolves around a lot of true historical events. With every episode we are always vetting some element of historical context. It’s been fun.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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12 June 2014

Disappearing Newspapers -- How will our descendants learn about our lives?

Tarbor' Press (Tarboro, N.C.), 1844_01-06
Source: http://library.digitalnc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/newstarboro/id/4276/rec/1

This article, The Daily Southerner of Tarboro to end publishing, recently printed in the News and Observer, was a painful article to read. A version of this newspaper has been in print since 1824 making it one of the few NC newspapers whose existence can be traced back almost 200 years. It served the community of Tarboro (population about 11,000 in 2012) and much of Edgecombe County (population about 56,000 in 2012).

Community newspapers such as The Daily Southerner (or the Tarboro Free Press or The Southerner as it was alternately called through time) add so much richness to our research when we find articles about our family in them. Such newspapers often had pages and pages devoted to "social news" and similar scattered throughout every edition. No bigger city newspapers could or do have the local flavor of a newspaper like this one. As part of my work as a professional genealogist in NC, I do a lot of research in the many NC newspapers looking for death notices, marriage announcements, birth notices, who was in the hospital, who was visiting from out of town, court cases notices and much, much more and every time I am looking for something specific, I am always distracted by all the notices that are such delightful-to-read personal tidbits about life in a community – a visit from extended family, attending an event out of the area, the death of a loved one living elsewhere, business travel and so much more.

This is not the type of news that one finds in modern newspapers nor, over the years, in the bigger city newspapers. I grew up in a small town, Newtown (CT), and The Newtown Bee is still published. I can still “see” the offices as I mentally drive through town. The “Bee” came out every Friday (if memory serves me) and you couldn’t wait to read it to find out what had been happening in town that you might not have learned via the grapevine. For bigger city news we read the Danbury newspaper.

Some of the same purpose of distributing local news is now often served by Facebook or other social media sites and it’s not like each town has a Facebook page nor does it include the same types of news as a local newspaper. And, how many people print out and save a Facebook page entry for their scrapbook? How much news across the breadth of a community is reported via Facebook? Social media is just not the same as a newspaper. There is still something about the touch and feel of a newspaper ... (and, yes, I love physical print books also!)

Sigh ... let’s hope that we and future generations are great stewards of preserving social media sites as I suspect that the Daily Southerner will not be the last small town newspaper to disappear ... with each one that stops publication, what once was the heartbeat of a community is silenced.

The North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill via its Facebook page gave a nice summary of where one can access extant copies of this newspaper.

+ Library of Congress' Chronicling America site (1835 – 1975, 1225 issues)

+ Earlier issues can be found on DigitalNC (March 26, 1824 – December 21, 1844, 991 issues)

Has your community recently lost its newspaper?

What is the neatest piece of personal or local news you found printed in a small-town newspaper?

What impact has the loss of the newspaper had upon your community?

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.