May 29, 2019

CONTACT: Deborah Hakes, dhakes@georgialibraries.org

Historic Middle and North Georgia Newspapers Added to Free Online Portal

Local newspapers are a mainline to the heart of a community. They help researchers shed light on elusive individuals and events ranging from property transactions, including the sale of enslaved persons, to birth and death announcements, arrest records, local businesses, scandals, and social events.

ATLANTA— Georgia HomePLACE and the Digital Library of Georgia are pleased to announce the addition of over 82,000 pages of newspapers dating from 1875-1959 to the Georgia Historic Newspapers portal. The portal is the largest provider of free online access to digitized licensed and public domain Georgia newspapers, and currently includes titles dating between 1763 and 2017.

“Local newspapers are a mainline to the heart of a community,” says HomePLACE Director Angela Stanley. “Digitized newspapers can be used to research local, state, and national history. They can help researchers shed light on elusive individuals and events ranging from property transactions, including the sale of enslaved persons, to birth and death announcements, arrest records, local businesses, scandals, and social events.”

Stephen Houser, director of the Twin Lakes Library System in Milledgeville, concurs: “Baldwin county’s Union-Recorder is Georgia’s oldest continuously operating newspaper. We’re thrilled to provide access to this important part of our community’s shared history. Resources like this fulfill a core value of our library’s mission, and preserving our history is a vital part of being able to share and tell our story as a community.”

Consisting of 28 titles and over 11,000 issues covering Baldwin, Banks, Barrow, Butts, Forsyth, Jackson, Lamar, and Madison counties, these latest digital collections provide historical images that are both full-text searchable and can be browsed by date, city, county, and type.

“The ability to search by keyword is a game changer for those patrons exploring family and community history,” says Anna Lyle, director of the Forsyth County Library System. “We are grateful to the Forsyth County News for granting us permission to digitize and display these issues online, and to Georgia HomePLACE for providing the funding to begin this project.”

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 this project was provided by Georgia HomePLACE and MainStreet Newspapers, Inc.

####

Georgia HomePLACE encourages public libraries and related institutions across the state to participate in the Digital Library of Georgia. HomePLACE offers a highly collaborative model for digitizing primary source collections related to local history and genealogy. HomePLACE is a project of the Georgia Public Library Service, a unit of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. HomePLACE is supported with federal Library Services and Technology Act funds administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Georgia Public Library Service.

Based at the University of Georgia Libraries, the Digital Library of Georgia is a GALILEO initiative that collaborates with Georgia’s libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions of education and culture to provide access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture, and life. This primary mission is accomplished through the ongoing development, maintenance and preservation of digital collections and online digital library resources. The Digital Library of Georgia also serves as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America and as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, the state’s historic newspaper microfilming project.