Published November 10, 2019
| 1 Comment | Leave A ReplyOne of the more intriguing things about my first career in newspapers was that we called the newspaper library “the morgue.”
Likely this came about primarily because it was the repository of actual obituaries as well as old newspaper clippings from which future obituaries would be compiled about the area’s prominent people.
He computer age changed many things about newspapers and many of the old-time morgues became computer databases of text-only articles instead.
In the meantime, newspapers have tired various strategies to allow access to their backfiles of historical issues as well as monetizing their value in some form.
Here at the Altoona Mirror, articles are on the website for a short time (available to subscribers through a “news on the go” feature) and virtually the entire run of the newspaper back to the 1870s is available for searching through the subscription service NewspaperArchive.com (FindMyPast, genealogy subscription service whose marquee items include many British records and Roman Catholic records, also leases the NewspaperArchive holdings).
Lancaster’s newspaper LNP has worked out a deal with Ancestry.com-owned Newspapers.com in which LNP subscribers can access 19 historical predecessor newspapers from Lancaster dating from 1795 to within a month of the present at no additional charge.
The affiliation with Newspapers.com enabled for the digitization of the Lancaster newspapers to happen on the subscription service’s dime.
Both Newspapers.com and the other major subscription player, GenealogyBank.com, have a constant need for new historical material to prod members to renew.
In addition to digitizing old newspapers that are out of copyright (due to changes in the law, everything before 1923 is in the public domain), the newspaper subscription databases have created “upgrade” subscriptions—Newspapers.com calls theirs “Publisher Extra” and GenealogyBank calls theirs “NewsLibrary”—that in many cases cover newspapers from the 1920s through the 1960s, an era in which the copyright laws leave the status of many papers in limbo. The subscription services in most cases are cutting deals with the publishers of still-in-existence newspapers for those decades of newspapers and sometimes beyond, as is the case with the Mirror and LNP.
And as for those old clipping morgues, some of theme are being repurposed: The Temple University Urban Archives took custody of the clippings and photographs from the now-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin a couple of decades ago, and have made the photographs available.
All in all, there are simply many twists and turns to accessing the information in historical newspapers, but as anyone who has browsed the old issues knows, there is much rewarding data to be found.
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For Sale
The Best of "Roots & Branches", Fifth Edition published July 2017, edited by Terri J. Bridgwater.
It contains a selection of columns from Beidler’s award-winning newspaper column (currently published in the Altoona Mirror), which is the only syndicated newspaper column on genealogy in Pennsylvania.
The book can be ordered online, or purchased directly from Jim when he speaks at a conference.
Robin
5 years ago
I am thankful for preserved images of newspapers available online. Without that, I would have NO info on my great grandmother except her marriage certificate.
She evidently testified against the crime syndicate during the prohibition era and had to start using a different identity. To this day, no one knows what name she died under, or where. At least I got an interesting view into a few of her life events.