by Brenna Corbit, Technical Services Librarian
Having last introduced you to the Pennsylvania news collection on Newspapers.com, I now present the Google Newspaper Archive, a wreck worth looking at. Bear with me as I rant, cuss, and rave while doing my best showing you how to sift through this mess that was on its way to being probably one of the best free digital newspaper archives online.
In 2006, Google launched the archive as a free digital archive of newspapers. Many are digital images scanned from microfilmed historical newspapers, some dating back to the 1700s. However, Google let the project drop in 2011. The good thing is that the archive still exists, but in a dilapidated form.
I can deal with the fact that Google kept the defunct archive online in a semi-usable state, but I cannot forgive them for having done such a sloppy job of digitizing the collection. You will notice when browsing that some of the days or months are missing, as if the archivist could have cared less about the project. I can understand a few mistakes, but not like this. I picture some smart-aleck punk haphazardly making a mess of the stacks of microfilm and muttering under his breath about his job. You, too, will learn to hate this guy when you try to find that obituary for your great great-grandfather who died, say, on January 14, 1907 only to discover that the archivist tossed the 1907 month of January into the done pile having never having digitized it. Pardon me while I swear (^%$#@*&%). Now that I have vented and am a bit calmer, I humbly thank Google for leaving this decimated gem online.
The archive was keyword searchable via OCR (optical character recognition). When it worked it was pretty good, but OCR had many issues in that period. In its current form, the archive is only semi-keyword searchable, so you may not find those juicy stories on your ancestors as easily as you can in Newspapers.com. Give it a whirl, but the odds are about as good as winning a lottery ticket. Despite its setbacks, you can still browse the archive as long as you already have knowledge of a date of death, for example.
A few pointers accompany the three screen shots below. Pick a year to start browsing and then narrow it down to a month. Then click on the month to view individual dates. If only a day or so is missing rather than a month, the images for that date may be available on the previous image set, but, again, don’t count on it. Are you beginning to see why I seethe with anger? The archive tools allow you sometimes to add a direct link to the article if you are adding digital references to your online family tree. But to play it safe, I like to keep a copy for myself. You cannot print from the archive, but you can do a screen shot which you can clip into any picture processing software and then save it as a digital image or for printing. My favorite is Microsoft Publisher. The print screen key is on the top row of the keyboard as “PrtScn.”
Although the archive has many newspapers, my primary research is in Berks County. Therefore, I find the Reading Eagle most useful, which is available from 1868 to 2008. The Reading Times on Newspapers.com only runs from 1859 to 1939, so you can see the value of this collection. If a date is missing, you can always go to the main branch of the Reading Public Library or The Genealogical Society of Berks County to browse the microfilms of the Reading Eagle. By the way, you will notice that the archivists knew what they were doing when they microfilmed these records. Praise the genealogy gods for somebody doing it right.
The Yocum Library has a direct link to the Reading Eagle portion of the Archive. If you want to browse other newspaper titles, go to the Google Newspaper Archive. Much of this may be confusing, so do not hesitate to come to the library for help.
Figure 1: Google Newspaper Archive
Figure 2: Searching the Google Newspaper Archive
Figure 3: Searching for Articles on Google Newspaper Archive
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