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A Survey of Online Digital Newspaper and Genealogy Archives: Resources, Cost, and Access1

Digitized historical newspapers opened the world of professional women whistlers to me. What began as a curiosity became a preoccupation as simultaneous keyword searches of hundreds of newspapers revealed details and a broad context for the history of these forgotten musicians. These women inspired the publication of hundreds of items including reviews of their performances, articles on the propriety of their activities, portraits, advertisements, announcements of coming events, short stories, and poetry and rhymes immortalizing the whistling girl. Although any one piece of information might have little value on its own, the volume of material begins to form a historical narrative, one that emerges with a speed that would not have been possible in the analog age. The process of searching shaped my understanding of digitized historical newspapers as a genre of content and the Internet as a point of access and delivery. As someone new to using digitized historical newspapers, I first had to recognize the breadth of the resources and identify the databases that held documents of potential value. No single database, free or otherwise, provides comprehensive access, although some come closer than others. Moreover, a number of valuable historical newspapers are preserved in the relatively small collections of cultural heritage organizations whose online resources are isolated and difficult to search. To explore the richness of these resources, some larger sense of the potential for research is necessary. This review essay charts this landscape and suggests avenues to access. Commercial databases provide rich holdings of digitized historical newspapers; however, despite the important service they provide, their expense raises concerns about access to documents preserving cultural heritage.2 America’s Historical Newspapers, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, GenealogyBank.com, NewspaperARCHIVE.com, Newspapers.com, and Paperofrecord.ca preserve huge amounts of historical material, but only for those with appropriate institutional affiliations, proximity to a subscribing institution, or a willingness to pay for access as an individual. Although some databases hold materials in common, each offers something unique; thus, to choose one over another is to eliminate possibilities for discovery. And yet financial realities, and the scarcity of research institutions that provide