[Genealib] Newspaper Indexing

[Anne Gometz]

Jim,
    I think of our current backfile work as the "Dead People Project".  We
index any mention of a death including obits, news articles, legal
notices, etc.  Murders are very popular.  We started with our oldest
newspaper and are hoping to do at least those years proceeding the
start of official death records in North Carolina.  Once we get to the
era of vital records, we can use those to lead us to an obituary if
one exists, but we've never been able to do much for deaths on an
unknown date before that.   This helps a lot even if it just tells us
that there isn't anything there.
     Anne Gometz
     Gastonia, NC
p.s. One intern with a sense of humor showed up one day for her stint with
the Dead People in full Goth rig. It made my day.


>
>    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.