New preservation grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

One of my favorite blog topics was in an email press release today. “WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 22, 2026) —The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced $41.4 million in grants for 81 humanities projects across the country. These include an online version of Noah Webster’s 1806 and 1828 dictionaries, a new permanent exhibition at […]

New video tutorials for Chronicling America newspapers

The Library of Congress has new video tutorials about using the great newspaper collection called Chronicling America. The collection is huge, searching is a bit discombombulated after a recent updating but generally falls into place after a few searches. Thankfully these new aids will help further! I know what I am going to be watching […]

Suddenly, it was a 4:00 a.m. bedtime for a genealogist

On a recent evening,  I planned to spend a couple hours on some updating and expanding of syllabus material for upcoming presentations. Then I was going to reward myself with some more time on my own family history. I accomplished both and went to bed at 4:00 a.m. The Montreal Daily Star. Monday, 14 September […]

Saint Paul, Minnesota newspapers online. FREE.

A newsletter from the Minnesota Historical Society tells of this fantastic news. I’ve been advocating for this over many years. I am excited. Fingers crossed for more, too! St. Paul Pioneer Press collectionThe Minnesota Historical Society is proud to present the St. Paul Pioneer Press 1861-1961 digital newspaper collection. View collection » This free, searchable archive […]

Chronicling America free digitized newspapers update

Chronicling America is a long-running part of the Library of Congress website. If you don’t know about this free access to thousands of newspaper and how it came about check here. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/. This morning my email had this update to the newspapers now digitized. Click on the Subscribe tab near the top of the About […]

Update coming to the free newspapers on Chronicling America

Love the free newspapers on Chronicling America? News this week from the Library of Congress:   We’re Upgrading on August 4! On August 4, 2025, users will automatically be sent from the legacy version of Chronicling America to a new version of Chronicling America with added features and tools. If at any point we are […]

The first Maternity Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Part 1

The 10 May 2025 Minnesota Star Tribune has an interesting article titled “Minneapolis’ first maternity hospital in 1886 was a savior for unmarried mothers and unwanted babies.” The subtitle says “Founder Martha Ripley was not only an obstetrician but also a mother figure to the women and infants at the facility.” The article by long-time […]

Pipestone County Museum in Minnesota adds online newspapers

A news release in the Pipestone County Star from 11 April 2025 brings some welcome research news about free online newspapers. Pipestone County is in southwestern Minnesota, borders South Dakota, and is surrounded by several other Minnesota counties. The newspaper database currently holds the years 1879-1916 and the plan is to add additional years via […]

Chronicling America Historic Newspapers adds maps showing nearby newspapers

Chronicling America, which includes fantastic and free access to digitized newspapers, grows constantly and is gearing up for a whole new website. It includes newspapers that are digitized by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) which works with newspaper repositories around the United States. It operates under The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and […]

Minnesota Historical Society Digital Newspaper Hub adds more old newspapers

The updates to digitized newspapers for Minnesota keeps adding to my research task list! I already found one new item about my late father-in-law. MN Digital Newspaper Hub – May 2024 content updateA content update to the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub today added 10,025 new issues and 158,877 new newspaper pages. New publicly available titles […]