Online Newspaper Archives

As I dig up more and more dirt, er, information on my ancestors through online newspaper archives, I have become interested in finding out exactly what resources are online that I can use in my research.

I originally chose Genealogy Bank over Newspaper Archive because it seemed to have more newspapers to search and they recently had a great sale. However, I kept Newspaper Archive in mind for a future subscription. When I found that a cousin had already found a couple of the articles in Newspaper Archive that I had forwarded to her from Genealogy Bank, I decided to check Newspaper Archive out to see exactly what newspapers they had. A decent collection, but not really focused on the areas I need right now.

A Google search for “online newspaper archives list of newspapers” pointed me to Ancestry’s newspaper page (under the list of ads on the right). The directions under “Search Tips” are to go to the Card Catalog Page, then select “Newspapers and Periodicals,” then “Newspapers,” and from there filter the results by location. (You can also filter by spans of years.) Instead, I decided to scroll through the complete list to get a good idea of which locations are best served by this collection.

On Ancestry, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa seem to have quite a few newspapers represented. There are a decent number of Texas newspapers, but not so much for the areas that I am most interested in. However, there are a few for cities where some branches of my families ended up, and I recently had very good luck with Abilene newspapers there.  Arkansas and Oklahoma seem to have only a few newspapers.

Since my cousin had used the Newspaper Archives database through her local library, I decided to check out my local libraries to see whether they carried the database. I usually access Heritage Quest through the nearest library to me, the Falls Church Public Library. On the library’s website, Heritage Quest used to be listed on the “Genealogy” page with a few other resources, but it now has its own page and I saw no other resources (except ProQuest) listed on the website. 

I then looked up the website of the Fairfax County Library system; I am aware that the main library of the system has a wonderful historical and genealogical resource in its Virginia Room. That in turn led me to a YouTube video about the Virginia Room. There is also a list of online databases accessible through the Library; it includes Accessible Archives (a collection of historical materials previously available only on microfilm), ProQuest, Heritage Quest, Historical Newspaper Index (for nine local newspapers), and NEHGS; some of these are accessible only from the Virginia Room. It does not appear that either the Falls Church Library or Fairfax County Libraries have Newspaper Archives.

I have previously used Chronicling America with good results and plan on checking them out again to see what is new. Miriam Midkiff already has quite a few links up on her website, the Online Historical Newspapers Website. There is also Google News Archive Search.

Wikipedia has a page with a list of free and pay online newspaper archives here. And, of course, for the most complete list, Cyndi’s list has a page here.