Access to some Georgia newspapers now easier

The Digital Library of Georgia at the University of Georgia just created a new umbrella website that makes it easier to access some historic newspapers.

The publications can be found at gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu. There’s an interactive map to click a region, pull down menus listing newspapers by county plus a good deal of background information about the digitizing program and how you can participate in getting your local paper included, if it is not there already.

In using this new setup, be careful, you don’t need to necessarily search a particular title, but all the newspapers for a city. If you search too narrowly, you could miss something. The site could use a county map that would indicate the coverage throughout the state. While this is a great endeavor to have all of the Georgia newspapers digitized by UGA pulled together in this one location, Georgia papers are on other websites. Later issues for many Georgia papers are found on GenealogyBank.com, a fee based site, which includes for example, the Columbus newspapers up to 1945, a great boon to those of us with roots there, and some other Georgia cities with later dates than covered by UGA. There are also good published abstracts of Georgia newspapers, many sponsored by the R. J. Taylor Jr. Foundation, that can be found at the Georgia Archives and other libraries. They can help you find clues via their allname indexes, where even if something is misspelled, you can find it and check it out.

Oakland Cemetery treasures

“Protecting the Treasures of Historic Oakland Cemetery” will be the Lunch and Learn lecture topic on August 11 at the Georgia Archives. Ashley Shares, preservation manager for Historic Oakland Foundation, will be the speaker at the free event that starts at noon. Bring your own lunch. For further information, see GeorgiaArchives.org or call 678-364-3710. More about Oakland, especially about tours, can be found at oaklandcemetery.com. A good book showing the treasures of Oakland is “Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery: An Illustrated History and Guide (UGA Press, 2012),” or visit their bookshop after a tour to see other great items.

Library of Virginia resumes six-day schedule

On July 8, the Library of Virginia returned to being open six days a week, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. For more on its great archives collection, how to visit, as well as order microfilm on interlibrary loan to use at your local public library, see lva.virginia.gov. Located in downtown Richmond, anyone with Virginia ancestors needs to visit there.