Tuesday's Tip: State Resource Blogs

If you're reading this blog, chances are you read other genealogy blogs. In fact, you've probably got a long list of them that you've added to your feed aggregator, such as Feedly. But as a genealogist, have you considered reading the blogs of the archives, libraries, and historical and genealogical societies of the states where your ancestors lived? For instance, as a Washington State resident, I follow the Washington State Archives blog: "From Our Corner," and the Washington State Library blog: "Between the Lines." Because I have so many ancestors from Michigan, I also follow the blog for the Michigan Digital Archives (Seeking Michigan), called "Look." There are numerous other state-level blogs I follow, especially those that might update me on digitized city directories or newspapers for my Online Historical Directories and Online Historical Newspapers sites.

How did I find these? Some I discovered while visiting the state websites in search of other resources. Others I found deliberately by doing an online search. Some of the search terms I used on Google were:

• "[name of state] State Archives" blog
• "[name of state] State Digital Archives" blog
• "[name of state] State Library" blog
• "[name of state] State Historical Society" blog
• "[name of state] State Genealogical Society" blog
• "[name of state] State Museum" blog

How will these blogs be beneficial in your genealogical research? They will:

• enhance your learning of the history of the state, its resources, and its historical figures, and thus how your ancestor was impacted and affected by such events and individuals
• give you understanding of the policies and procedures of obtaining genealogical and historical resources
• help you discover new and updated resources, including databases, photographs, maps, newspapers, directories, yearbooks, biographies, art and artifacts
• caution you about facility closures, record access restrictions, and possible negative impacts upon genealogical research in order for you to make a call to action

If you are reading this from a non-U.S. country--or have traced your American ancestors "across the pond"--don't hesitate to discover provincial, regional, and municipal archives, library, and society blogs in those nations as well. Use Google Translate to assist you in any language challenges.

Finally, for my fellow Americans, don't forget the Library of Congress blogs (yes, there are more than one!) and the National Archives (NARAtions) blog. Happy reading, happy learning, happy hunting!

News from Google News Archive and Chronicling America

Have you visited my Online Historical Newspapers website, or its corresponding blog? I created it to help genealogists and other researchers find digitized newspapers for their locations of research. Here's some news that highlights two major digitization projects:

 Google News Archive is ending their newspaper digitization project:

We work closely with newspaper partners on a number of initiatives, and as part of the Google News Archives digitization program we collaborated to make older newspapers accessible and searchable online. These have included publications like the London Advertiser in 1895, L’Ami du Lecteur at the turn of the century, and the Milwaukee Sentinel from 1910 to 1995.

Users can continue to search digitized newspapers at http://news.google.com/archivesearch, but we don’t plan to introduce any further features or functionality to the Google News Archives and we are no longer accepting new microfilm or digital files for processing. [Hat tip to John D. Reid of Anglo-Celtic Connections]

A link to browse individual historical titles is at http://news.google.com/newspapers, and from there you can search the individual newspaper. I will continue to add these titles to my Online Historical Newspapers website. It does take time, and I am currently nearly finished with the titles beginning with the letter A.

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Meanwhile, the Library of Congress' Chronicling America project continues in full swing:

Last week, the Library of Congress updated the Chronicling America Web site with more than 230,000 additional newspaper pages in various titles. The site now provides access to more than 3.7 million searchable newspaper pages from 506 newspaper titles, published in 22 states and the District of Columbia between 1860 and 1922.

These titles are also being added and updated on my site. Keeps me busy!