Governmental records at the state, county, and city level are important resources for studying the past and the documents are usually available in a state or local archives. But when local bodies digitize public historical resources it makes the job of the researcher so much easier, increasing efficiencies for agency staff, and reducing custodial and preservation problems as paper ages and becomes fragile.
Recently I needed to do some work with the public records in Dover, DE. and I discovered that the city has done a fine job of making its paper records available electronically on the net. Beginning in 1920, the Council minutes are online and those materials continue on to the present. There are also archived minutes for many of the committees and commissions, though most of those don’t go back as far.
Thank you City of Dover for making public records available in such an efficient and helpful way. Anyone studying the past in capital of the First State will find this to be a helpful resource.
At a rapid pace these days, old newspapers are being digitized and made openly available to researchers and as I work on projects I often found additional collections of these valuable publications. That was the case recently, as I worked on the “Flight 214 Remembrance Program” to mark the passage of fifty years since a Pan American World Airways jet on approach to Philadelphia crashed. The big jet was struck by lightning and everyone onboard perished.
Many of the passengers were from Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey, so I needed to examine 1963 papers from those areas. Many haven’t been digitized yet, but I discovered one very helpful resource, which I think will have value for other readers of this blog. The Delaware County (PA) Library System has created high quality e-copies of products published in Chester.
The newspapers in the database are fully searchable and are excellent for gaining the local perspective on historical news or for researching your family history. The databases, provided to the Library System by the Newspaper Archive, includes, papers beginning in 1867 and running up to 1976. The titles include the Chester Daily Times, Chester Evening Times, Chester Reporter, Chester Times, and Delaware County Daily Times. Click here to access the Delaware County Public Library’s digital archives.
A Chester Times extra announcements an assassination attempt on President McKinley in 1901.
“The War” a newspaper published in New York during the War of 1812. Photo Credit: The Blog – I Found it at the Wilkinson.
While at the College of Southern Maryland doing a program on communications and newspapers during the War of 1812, the audience was interested in some of the digital newspapers that are now available online for researching this era. We had talked about how editors gathered and distributed news during the times when the region was on the front line of the war, and in discussion session afterwards members were curious about the newspapers. They asked questions such as how so many survived, what the production process was like, and how to access them online.
While there are a number of digital collections of broadsheets online from subscription e-content providers, there are some great free ones too. One, a seldom used newspaper called “The War,” is a resource researchers of this period will find of interest. Printed in New York from 1812 to 1817 by Samuel Woodworth, the publisher devoted the paper to documenting the war for subscribers. He also sought to make create a history of those alarming times. “The War” has been digitized by the Lilly Library and Indiana University, thus making the pages available to a broad audience. Also there is the digital newspaper project at the Library of Congress.
This online resource came to our attention as a result of a post we read on the blog “I found it at the Watkinson”
“The War” a War of 1812 newspaper digitized by Indiana University. Photo Credit: Indiana University.
At one time WDEL in Wilmington also had a television broadcast station. Source: http://www.oldwilmington.net/oldwilmington/radio-tv.htm
There are significant online resources to help scholars and the public locate and use video and audio recordings of broadcasts, and we are seeing some great advances in this area. One of those involves the Internet Archive, a source of web-based content since the late 1990s. Beginning with printed matter and websites, the aggregator and digitizer quickly added audio and moving images to the initial holdings.
Now this virtual repository has taken another leap forward as it added television news from 20 different channels. By collecting and preserving broadcasts, the Archive gives researchers easy access to network and local programs produced over the past 3 years. Twenty-four hours after an airing, the latest show is added to the files. But “The plan is to go back year by year, and slowly add news video going back to the start of television,” the New York Times reports.
This collection was inspired by Vanderbilt University’s Television News Archive, an earlier project to preserve and provide access to the news broadcasts from the national television networks. Vanderbilt creates recording of news broadcasts and preserves the content for future generations while providing the widest access possible within the copyright limits. This repository has recordings back to August 5, 1968. Its core consist of regularly scheduled newscasts from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox News.
The Library of Congress is working to rescue shows shot on fragile videotape, the Washington Post Reports. At the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center technicians are converting old videotapes, from the 1950s through the 1970s, into digital files. The tapes with delicate coatings are in outdated formats, and programs were often erased as producers “were slow to realize that the initial records might have value in the distant future.”
A WDEL TV broadcast from Wilmington Delaware in 1950. Courtesy of oldwilmington.net http://www.oldwilmington.net/oldwilmington/radio-tv.htm
Also the University of Baltimore’s Langsdale Library has the WMAR Collection, a source for news broadcasts from Maryland’s first television station. The film and videotapes comprise broadcasts from 1948 to 1987.
These resources are going to be valuable as scholars and the public may easily access and leverage largely untapped broadcast records to peer into and reconstruct the past.
