Do you seek out marriage notices, obituaries and other items from newspapers when researching your family? Do you like to use free resources when available? If the answer to both questions is ‘yes’, then make sure you check out the local library to see if they have digitized newspapers.
I was reminded of this valuable resource when I saw a recent post by Kenneth Marks to Facebook.
When I followed his link, I discovered that the Emporia (KS) newspapers had been updated. A quick search of the Emporia Public Library’s digiization of the Emporia Gazette for my BRILES surname turned up quite a few articles that I need to review.
Since I use the digitized Seneca newspapers all the time for my Nemaha County, Kansas research I was aware that many Kansas libraries have used Advantage Archives to digitize their newspaper holdings. This is in addition to the project by the Kansas State Historical Society to digitize the Kansas newspapers on Newspapers.com.
Thanks to Kenneth Marks’ efforts to find and catalog free genealogy resources, his Newspapers page leads to lists of these free newsapers, including those digitized by the local public libraries, for each state. The list for Kansas is LONG so be sure to scroll thru to the bottom to make sure you don’t miss a paper. This page is divided into sections based on the source of the digitized paper:
- Kansas Historical Newspapers (Chronicling America)
- Google News
- Kansas Digial Newspapers (even though dates are not indicated, this is basically thru 1923)
- County and Library Collections — arranged by county
If in doubt about the efforts of the local public libraries to digitize their newspaper holdings, check ou this map from Advantage Archives on the digitized newspapers on their site.
I am very thankful that local libraries are contributing to the wealth of resources by digitizing their newspaper holding.