Newspaper Resources

Newspapers are fun resources but they can be difficult to find. Here's some of my favorite free online newspaper sites to help you get you started:

Chronicling America

The Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities partnered to create Chronicling America, a searchable database of historic American newspapers. The site allows you to search by keyword, phrase, date, ethnic group, state or language.

Elephind
Elephind searches several of the largest digitized newspaper collections simultaneously. Type keywords and phrases into the search bar and get results from newspaper archives from across the world.

Google News Newspaper Archive
Google created a great collection of digitized newspapers. Unfortunately, the collection is not keyword searchable. Find the name of the newspaper you're looking for and browse the paper like digitized microfilm.

The Ancestor Hunt: Newspaper Links
This blog hosts an exhaustive list of online newspaper resources for each state. If the newspaper you're looking for isn't listed here, it's probably not online yet.

Local Newspapers

Newspapers play an important role in genealogy and local history research. We have several resources to help you find local newspapers and articles.

To begin, search our obituary index for Glenview-area obituaries. You can also find local articles about specific topics, businesses, or people in our newspaper clipping file located in the Genealogy & Local History Room.

For more in-depth research, consult our online databases or browse our microfilm collection.

Newspaper databases:
Newspapers.com 
This covers the entire United States but you can find a variety of local newspaper coverage dating back to the 1800s. This includes the historic Daily Herald whose coverage includes Glenview. For more recent articles, try the following databases:

Chicago Sun-Times (1986-Present)
Chicago Tribune Archive (1849-1994)
Chicago Tribune (1989-Present)

Daily Herald (1995-Present)
Glenview Announcements (1995-Present)
NewsBank: Illinois

Local newspapers on microfilm:

1928-1929
The Niles Center Press

1931-1954
Northbrook News

1931-1954
Glenview View

1940-1954
The Announcements:
Glenview, Northbrook, Northfield

1950-1954
Glenview Post

1954-Present
Glenview Announcements

2001-Present
Glenview Journal

Newspapers.com

Now you can search for your ancestors with Newspapers.com. Use your library card to access this database of nearly 5,000 historic newspapers.

Newspapers.com has a collection of 149 papers for Illinois spanning the 1830s to the twenty-first century. You will find the historic Daily Herald whose coverage includes the north and northwest suburbs (including Glenview) from 1901-2006.

Aside from the United States collection, you can also research papers from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, and Northern Ireland.

To learn more, watch the excellent tutorials found in the Help Center.

Why Newspapers?

If you haven't started using newspapers in your research, you may be missing out on a lot of interesting information. Newspapers may complement information in the official documents you've already found but they can also help you break down your brick walls.

Here are few reasons why you should search in newspapers:

• Newspapers can verify or supplement vital records. They may not be official documents like birth, marriage, and death certificates but they can  help you discover the date those records were created. Look for obituaries, birth, engagement, wedding, anniversary and probate notices. The dates you find in these newspaper articles may help you find the official certificates.
• Stories give context to your ancestor's life. Newspapers give details that official records often lack. Discover what your grandmother wore on her wedding day or learn the specifics of your grandfather's occupation. You will never find these kinds of details in marriage certificates or census records. 
• Learn about your ancestor's community or time period. Don't just read your ancestor's obituary--read the entire newspaper! Read about the community your family lived in and the major news events that would have affected their lives. You'll gain a better understanding of your ancestors and their life stories. 

Genealogy can be about more than just collecting names and BMD dates. Use newspapers to give life to ancestor's stories. 

Find online newspaper resources here. 

Newspapers

Stop by this Thursday for our class on GenealogyBank. It's a great database for researching old historical newspapers. Sign up online or call the Reference Desk at 847-729-7500 x7700.

Don't forget to check out our list of digital historical newspapers. All of the sites are free to use. Or visit the newspaper links on Cyndi's List.

Illinois Newspapers

With the library's subscription of GenealogyBank, you have access to historic newspapers from across the country.

For the Chicago area, you can search the following newspapers:

Chicago Daily Times (1855-1856)
Chicago Times (1854-1888)
Daily Inter Ocean (1874-1894)
Inter Ocean (1879-1889)
Pomeroy's Democrat (1869-1879)

For more recent newspapers, you can use Newsbank to search:

Chicago Sun-Times (1986-present)
Daily Herald (1995-present)
Glenview Announcements (1995-present)

Newsbank gives you access to other suburban and Illinois papers too. And through the library's databases you can also search the Chicago Tribune archives 1849-1990 and 1985-present.

The Genealogy and Local History Room has Glenview-area newspapers on microfilm going back to the 1920s and don't forget to use our Obituary Index to locate death notices.

If you're still not finding what you're looking for with library resources, try one of these free websites to locate historic newspapers.

GenealogyBank

Glenview now has access to GenealogyBank!

To access GenealogyBank:

• From the Glenview Public Libray homepage, click on Databases & eResearch.
• Click on Genealogy.
• Select Newsbank: America's Newspapers
• Click on America's GenealogyBank.

GenealogyBank has digitized and searchable historical newspapers going back to 1690. Newspapers are great source for the obvious: obituaries, marriage and birth announcements. You can also find real estate transactions, family reunions, military personnel and casuality lists, ship arrivals and passenger lists, photographs, and more.

GenealogyBank also has a collection of searchable books and historic documents including: family histories, military records, pension requests, land documents, and orphan petitions.

Newspaper Links

We looked at a lot of different websites for researching newspapers in my Historical Newspapers class. Here is a large list of links I've found that would be useful for you in your research:

Newspaper Links

Illinois Obit Finder

The Illinois Obit Finder lets you search for citations for obituaries that can be found in the Newspaper Microfilm Collection of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (ALPL).

The Illinois Obit Finder contains only those names that have been researched at the library. If you find someone’s name, the obituary is available through the ALPL. If you do not find a name it just means that no one has researched that particular name and recorded it.

Click here for a list of the Illinois newspaper titles on microfilm that are available through the ALPL.

If you find an obituary citation and you want a copy of the obituary, you can order a copy or borrow the microfilm on interlibrary loan. You can also contribute your obituary citations to the Illinois Obit Finder database.

The more names that are researched at the ALPL and contributed to the database. the more complete the Illinois Obit Finder will become!

Locating Old Newspapers

Often, obituaries of our immigrant ancestors will be found in ethnic newspapers.

One way to locate microfilm of old newspapers is by using WorldCat.. through the Library's website.

Search for the name of a town as a subject, and the keywords newspapers and the name of an ethnic group. Remember to click on limit type to "serial publications."

Here is the result of a sample search for Chicago (Ill.) Polish newspapers.

Click on Libraries Worldwide to see which libraries have the newspaper you need.

Newspapers

The Illinois Newspaper Project (INP) is part of the U. S. Newspaper Program (USNP). The website includes an interesting history of Illinois newspapers.

The INP database includes newspapers the INP has been able to identify, locate, and microfilm. Its value for genealogists is that it provides more ways search for obituaries and news stories about ancestors and families.

The database lets you search by county, city, title, or subject. It shows when and where the newspapers were published; which repositories in Illinois have which issues; and whether they have original newsprint or microfilm.

Anyone interested in looking at an institution's newspapers should contact the institution directly. Use the Participant Locator or Worldcat to find specific contact information.

Glenview Obituaries

The Glenview Newspaper Obituary Index is a service offered through the Library. Find it on our genealogy page. The index lists names for which there was an obituary or death notice in the newspapers that served Glenview since 1928, and for which the Library owns microfilm.

Newspapers Online

Here is a list of online newspapers by state. The listing also has a convenient link to the archived versions of the papers.

Finding newspapers online can be complicated, with lots of analysis required to sift through access points and third party providers.

The Library of Congress (LoC) Chronicling America web page provides a searchable/browseable directory of all known American papers (use the 'Find' box).

Each state has a newspaper program, part of the National Newspaper Program. Content varies, but some states will not only provide their subset of the LoC database, but also say what libraries in the state have what newspaper titles for what years.

The International Coalition of Newspapers page highlights and links to past, present, and prospective digitization projects of historic newspapers.

Wikipedia also lists online newspaper archives, and so does Cyndi's List.

Historical Newspapers and Indexes on the Internet has some unique items.

Genealogist Jeffrey Bockman has also made available a list of online newspapers.

Genealogybank: Free Trial!

Until the end of August, you have the opportunity to test the America's GenealogyBank database.

America's GenealogyBank provides Internet access to a comprehensive U.S. genealogy core collection, including historical newspapers, books, documents, obituaries, and the Social Securioty Death Index. . It consolidates records from the 17th to 21st centuries in a single database of several million items.

Log in with your Glenview Library card number.

Leave a "comment" or email to let us know what you think of America's GenealogyBank .

"He Loves A Good Deal of Rum..."

New genealogy book at the Glenview Public Library:

"He loves a good deal of rum-- " : military desertions during the American Revolution, 1775-1783 / Joseph Lee Boyle.
R973.34 BOY GENEALOGY v. 1 and 2

This compilation is from thirty-eight newspapers published from Massachusetts to North Carolina from 1775 to 1783. It is arranged chronologically by date of newspaper deserter notice

Looking for Very Old Chicago-Area Newspapers?

Are you trying to find a very old obit or news story from the Chicago area?

Are you positive it is not in the Chicago Tribune Archive online?

Have you asked our Reference Staff for some professional guidance in this area, and the Library's resources do not go back far enough?

You may consider checking with the Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington General Information Services Dept., Chicago newspaper microfilm holdings.

Date range for the standard Chicago English language papers is from 1833 to current. Newspapers include Chicago Democrat, Chicago American, Chicago Daily American, Chicago Express, Chicago Journal, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Democrat Press, Chicago Times, Inter Ocean, Chicago Herald, Chicago Record, Chicago Mail, Chicago Evening Post, Chicago Daily News, Chicago Record, Chicago Record Herald, Chicago Times Herald, Chicago Chronicle, Chicago Defender, Chicago Sun, Chicago Today, and others.

If the obit or news story is about an immigrant or member of a first generation ethnic group, you should also investigate the following, which CPL also has on microfilm:
--Chicago Neighborhood newspapers
--Suburban newspapers
--Various U.S. ethnic newspapers
--Alternative press newspapers
--Early American Newspapers (1704 -1820)
--The Lerner Newspaper Collection of Chicago neighborhood and suburban newspapers (1905 -1993)
--The Underground Newspaper Microfilm Collection (1963 -1984)

To find out which titles and years they own, or to ask them which newspaper might contain what you need, call (312)747-4300.