There are a few newspapers relevant to one of my ancestral struggles that have not been digitized. They are on microfilm, but there are too many for me to go through the entire set, issue by issue, for eighty years–which is how long the people of interest lived there.
I will not just run to the library that has them and start searching. I will make a list of the possible events that might have warranted mention of my relatives in the newspaper. Included on that list are:
- Vital events in their lives (birth, marriage, and death).
- Dates of other events that might have been mentioned in the newspaper, such as: arrests, land transactions, court actions, anniversaries, etc.
- Events mentioned in other digitally indexed newspapers that might have been mentioned in the newspaper I am searching.
If the newspapers are not indexed and there is no time to do a page-by-page search, a list is important.
2 Responses
Sometimes the local public or other library or historical or genealogical society might have created their own index to the local newspaper. In my area, the local university library created an index to the local paper from about 1880 until the late 1970s, and made a few copies printed on that large format paper of the Daisy wheel printers of the time. The public library obtained a copy, and had the microfilm of the newspaper for all those years plus subscribed to subsequent years until it went online. The public library eventually donated it all to the local historical society library.
Good point. It’s worth noting that these indexes frequently just to “main names” or names of subjects of articles, not like the more extensive (yes with frustrating issues) “indexes” of today.