[Genealib] Newspaper Indexing

[Leslie Couture]

Jim, 
Our paper is indexed from 1909 to the current year.  I was not here when it was begun, but a lone volunteer did the majority of the looking up.  She is a retired woman, now in her eighties.  She started 20 years ago.  She went through all of the microfilm and wrote down each birth, death and marriage announcement she found on note cards.  She wrote down the the full names of the individuals, where they were from, the date, page number and column.  The column isn't necessarily important in later papers, but in the earlier papers it is.  This is because the announcements are all over the page and hard to find.   Another person would enter the names into an Excel file, they are then proofread by a librarian.   We print them out after a year's accumulation and bind by the decade.  

We keep an extra unbound hard copy of each decade in a box for safe keeping - you never know what will happen in the future.  Those copies were printed out on good paper.

When I came on nine years ago, our computers were upgraded with Windows 95.  It was my job to convert the original documents stored on floppies to the new version of Word.  The original documents had been created on an old computer using Word Perfect and someone had chosen an odd font.  The conversin didn't work because the font became corrupt and we had nothing but decadees worth of heiroglyphics that were useless.  We had to redo them all.  This is just something to think about.  Over time, you will need to remember to upgrade your original documents.

The information in Excel can easily be transferred into an Access file, which can then be put into a searchable database for the Internet.  There's probably a better program to use, but this is what we went with (we had to use what we had).

I would say, that to avoid doing triple work and to give you a better idea of just how much work that this will encompass, begin indexing from the beginning (the earliest).  Start with page one and do everything: births, marriages and obituaries.  Be thorough and take your time.  If you can, break it up during the daying so you don't get burned out.  I've been doing this for eight years and I have a love/hate relationship with this paper.  

Leslie Couture
Denton Public Library System
Emily Fowler Central Library
Genealogy/Special Collections
Denton, TX

940-349-8713
Leslie.Couture at cityofdenton.com 


>>> jholland at ccml.org 6/22/2006 12:50 PM >>>
   No one in our county has ever indexed the newspapers before. Even the
local paper office sends people here to look up obituaries. We do not
have many resources for this job, and I may be the only person available
to work on this. 

 

   What would you suggest as a way to begin? We would want to begin with
the obituaries, later we might include marriages, etc. I get the opinion
that beginning with the older issues would be the most helpful as they
are the hardest to find. We can find death dates several way including
tombstone information, but it would be most helpful to know if an
obituary exists before we spend a lot of time searching for it.

 

Thanks!

 

Jim Holland

Interlibrary Loans/Local History/Genealogy Cleveland County Memorial
Library

104 Howie Drive

Shelby NC 28150

Phone: 704-487-9069 ext 225 Fax: 704-487-4856

Email: jholland at ccml.org 

 

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