The University of Georgia's Digital Library of Georgia recently has placed digitized and searchable editions of newspapers from four South Georgia towns online.
Each newspaper covered a larger area than just the home county. Included are newspapers from Albany (1845 through 1883), Americus (1870-1921), Thomasville (1873-1922) and Valdosta (1908-1912). For some cities, editions of more than one newspaper have been included.
The South Georgia Historic Newspaper Archive joins other archive collections on that website for Athens, Atlanta, Columbus, Macon and Milledgeville.
To find these, go to Google and search for "Digital Library of Georgia," and on the homepage if you click on Browse by Media Type and then Newspapers, the entire collection will appear. The direct website is http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu.
Other newspapers online
For more information on how to find newspapers elsewhere online, see the November 2011 issue of Family Tree Magazine, now available at bookstores, in which Rick Crume has written an article covering 15 websites.
You also can find the magazine online at www.familytreemagazine.com, but it's well worth a subscription, as each issue contains enough material to keep researchers busy for a long time.
Georgia Historical Quarterly
The Georgia Historical Society in Savannah recently announced that past issues of Georgia Historical Quarterly, from 1917 to within the past five years, are now available online at JSTOR, the not-for-profit digital archive.
Access to JSTOR is available through college and university research institutional links. While that will make this valuable journal more available to the public and easily searchable, you have to have access through a university or a paid subscription to use it.
For more information, and access to other publications of the society online, see their website, www.georgiahistory.com, and go to "Publications."
A two-volume, published index to the first 60 years of the quarterly, 1917-1976, is available at many libraries and archives. A complete set of the quarterly can be found at many archives and libraries, including the Georgia Archives.
Tourism and genealogy
A recent survey of 53 state and territorial archives in the United States has revealed that Georgia's state archives, now open only two days a week for research, has the distinction of being open the least number of hours of any archives in the nation. This came about because of severe budget cuts during the 2011 legislative session.
Other states have taken a different approach to supporting and even marketing their heritage centers. In Oklahoma, they have a genealogy link on the state tourism website at www.travelOK.com/genealogy.
At least in Oklahoma they realize the value of genealogy and history as a tourism destination point. Their website gives one some good information on where to go to do research in that state.
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