Georgia Public Library Service and the Digital Library of Georgia are pleased to announce the addition of over 53,000 pages of newspapers dating from 1877-1967 to the Georgia Historic Newspapers (GHN) portal. The portal is the largest provider of free online access to digitized licensed and public domain Georgia newspapers and currently includes titles dating from 1763-2021.
Consisting of 15 titles and nearly 8,000 issues covering Gilmer, Glynn, Mitchell, Newton, and White counties, these latest digital collections expand geographic inclusion within the portal to include previously underrepresented counties.
Digitization of newspaper content from Georgia’s rural, agricultural, and unrepresented geographic areas remains a top priority.
“As part of genealogical research, I, and many others, have spent countless hours in our Gilmer County Library going through the Ellijay Times-Courier’s microfilm to find articles about ancestors to add to their lives’ stories,” said Barbara Dover, a Gilmer County Library patron. “Even finding out what was going on in their piece of the world at certain points of their lives often provided blossoms and leaves to the branches of our family trees. Having free access to digitized editions of the Times-Courier through the Georgia Historic Newspapers portal will now make it possible for people like me to research from home. This is one of the many varied ways that our library serves as an integral part of our community.”
Historic newspapers document a wide variety of information of interest to researchers, including local, national, and international news and events, business development, society announcements, and genealogical information like births, deaths, marriages, and estate dealings.
Since 2006, Georgia’s public libraries have funded over 1.1 million of the 2.4 million pages of digitized content in the Georgia Historic Newspapers portal. Anyone with an internet connection can freely access papers that are both full-text searchable and can be browsed by by date, city, county, and type.
“These digitized newspapers are a history book waiting to be read,” said Newton County Library Board member Frank B. Turner, Sr.
All issues are freely available online through Georgia Historic Newspapers, which utilizes the Library of Congress’ open source tool, Chronicling America, for online delivery. Annually, the Digital Library of Georgia digitizes over 100,000 historic newspaper pages in accordance with technical guidelines developed by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress for the National Digital Newspaper Program.
Funding for digitization was provided by Georgia Public Library Service. Project selection was conducted by GPLS in consultation with the Marshes of Glynn Libraries, the Newton County Library System, the Northeast Georgia Regional Library System, the Sequoyah Regional Library System, and the Southwest Georgia Regional Library System.
This article was provided by Delana Knight, the Executive Director of the Northeast Georgia Regional Library System, a part of the Georgia Public Library Service.
