The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide

Beidler, James M. The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide: How to Find Your Ancestors in Archived Newspapers. Cincinnati: Family Tree Books, 2018.

Well-known genealogist James M. Beidler discusses newspapers as a genealogical source. He covers most types of newspapers. Religious newspapers were omitted from separate treatment although a few titles showed up in a geographic sample in the book. He does an excellent job relating available databases, even acknowledging ethical questions about business practices of some. Beidler, best known for his German genealogical research, includes international newspapers, not limiting the discussion to the United States. The book's greatest flaw lies in the format of the otherwise excellent bibliography. It does not employ a recognized style manual such as Evidence Explained or Chicago Manual of Style. Since one chapter included information on citing newspapers following the recognized genealogical citation manual Evidence Explained, this surprised me. Beidler's work will become the most-cited "how to" guide on newspaper research in the genealogical community in the near future. All genealogy libraries with methodology collections should purchase a copy. I received an electronic advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Odds & Ends

The Library of Congress has a new photostream at Flickr to highlight some of the newspaper supplements in their Chronicling America collection. Chronicling America has digital images of newspaper pages from eleven states plus the District of Columbia for the years 1880-1910. They also have a directory which includes newspapers published from 1690 to the present.

Nicole Engard found a Today Show video about the importance of libraries in these tough economic times.

Europeana is in beta. There are 4 million items in the collection. It contains images, sounds, text, and video. A search for "genealogy" does return hits. Check it out.

I've been adding to this post all day so it's time to post it!

Top 10 Newspaper Web Sites

I thought it was interesting that Tennessee had two newspapers that made it on the list of the top ten newspaper Web sites. Both the Knoxville News-Sentinel and the Tennessean made the list. Congratulations to both papers!

Newspapers

Newspapers have long been a great genealogical resource; however, the newspaper, as we know it, is dying. Here's an interesting article from the New Yorker about the demise of the newspaper.

So, what are the three things that you would miss most if newspapers ceased to exist, and what do you think would "replace" these things?

I'll attempt to answer my own question, but I invite others to express their opinion in the comments or in a blog post of their own. (Please share the link to your post in the comments.)

1. Obituaries - I think that funeral homes provide links to these and that many will be archived on Legacy.com. They will only be free for a short period of time. After that we will pay a small fee to access them. There are obituary projects out there, but most have been very limited in their success. These projects are only as good as the volunteers. Coverage tends to be very spotty--some areas have great volunteers; others don't. Ultimately, I think Legacy.com with its feeds coming from funeral directors is going to be a better solution.
2. Marriage & Birth Notices - In this category, I'm also including those anniversary notices which are often printed with the marriage notices. The marriage notices have provided some wonderful photos of the bride and sometimes the groom over the years. The birth notices, supplied by the hospital, will give date of birth and the parents' names. Marriages can still be located in county records offices. Births can be located with state offices. (I refuse to be more specific because different states call these different things.) Some hospitals already offer birth information on their web sites, but it's often fairly secure. I think that some of the photo functions can be replaced by Web photo albums; however, if an individual is in charge of editing his/her own album, we all know what is going to happy if the divorce comes along. I don't think I have a good solution outside the permanent records in governmental offices, and many of these come with so many restrictions that it makes it difficult to obtain the information. Newspapers have been very helpful to many researchers when record access is limited.
3. Small Town News Complete with Photos - I will miss the small community papers for the articles about the community itself--which students were in the county spelling bee (along with their photos), the officers of the local garden club (complete with photos), the scholarship recipients (with their photos), the new bank manager (with an article about his past experience and his photo), etc. The big town papers sometimes print this information in brief form, but they rarely have the intimiate photos of the small town paper. They rarely get down to the minute detail that the local papers have. I think that most of this information will likely move to blogs. The schools (and school organizations) can easily create their own blogs that tell how the band did in the recent competition, provide a picture of the band marching in the parade, show the students who competed at the state level for FBLA, show the officers of the club, etc. Community organizations can get in the act with their own blogs. The local bank can place the press release on its own website or provide a blog with news to its customers. To be as effective as the local newspaper, community blogs need to be linked to each other so that folks get a comprehensive report of the community. Blog rolls are perfect for doing this.

Nearing Extinction

This is not a post about an endangered biological species. According to an article posted at Entrepreneur.com, record stores, newspapers (at least in paper format), and used bookstores are facing extinction. Remnil at the Ann Arbor District Library blog thinks that the independent bookstore is in more danger than the used bookstore. I've noticed the doors shutting on lots of record stores as MP3s become the medium of choice for music lovers. (Should we even call them record stores? Very few of them have "vinyl" anymore.) I can also see the change in the ways that news is being delivered; however, I have a little bit of hope that small community papers might actually survive. The Sunday paper might survive longer than the weekday paper if they would give it a shot! As far as used bookstores, I see no decrease in their popularity in the Knoxville area. I think some of the smaller ones might not survive, but the larger ones like McKay's in Knoxville seem to still be thriving. Independent bookstores are becoming less plentiful in the days of Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million. I think there are some markets where these can still survive with careful marketing and with targeting special audiences. (At least, I hope they will survive.) I will admit that I buy most of my new books online but it's because I'm only aware of two bookstores in Morristown. One of those is small and in the mall way on the other side of town. I don't go to the mall that often. (I much prefer the newer malls that are more like shopping centers where you can go to a single store without having to hope you can find a parking place close to the entrance closest to the store you want to visit and hoping you remembered exactly where the store is.) The other is the Christian bookstore. I do go there some, but they don't sell history books or mysteries (except for a handful of Christian mysteries) which are the two categories of books from which I purchase the most new books. Although I love Borders and Barnes & Noble in Knoxville and Books-A-Million in Sevierville, it's far easier and usually cheaper to just order them online. There are even a couple of independent bookstores I like in Knoxville. I really don't want to see bookstores of any type extinct.

One bright spot from the article . . . telemarketing calls are also on the extinction list!

Historical Newspapers

Genealogists are always looking for historical newspapers for their family history research. One project that is digitizing some of these is Chronicling America which is hosted by the Library of Congress. The site has a database of newspapers published from 1690 to the present as well as some scanned images from 1900-1910. A June 15 press release states that the site now has 310,000 pages. The project is in beta.

Old Newspaper

Cow Hampshire has a post about the oldest newspaper in the United States, the New Hampshire Gazette. It's a very interesting read.