The West Virginia Library Commission had announced that they have added two newspaper databases to WVInfoDepot. Both should be wonderful additions. NewsBank will give us access to full text of some current major West Virginia newspapers from Charleston, Huntington, and Morgantown. NewspaperArchive provides a more historic perspective and should be extremely useful to historians and genealogists.
Of particular interest to Weirton residents is the fact that many editions of the Weirton Daily Times from 1955 to 1977 are included in NewspaperArchive. These newspapers appear in the same format as they were originally printed, so not only do you get to see the articles, but also the ads, the cartoons, the TV listings, the real estate transfers, the sports page, and the wedding announcements.
The most exciting feature is that you can search for names or key words across all of the newspapers available or narrow it down to a particular newspaper, a time period or even a specific issue of a newspaper. Of course the library has the Weirton Daily Times on microfilm, but unless you know the exact date of the item you are looking for, it can take many hours scanning the film to find a particular item. I searched the library's name in the database and came up with over 3,000 times that the library was mentioned in the newspaper during that time period.
Of course, this isn't a complete collection of the Weirton Daily Times back issues. The library doesn't have every issue, but our microfilm collection of the Weirton Daily Times begins with March 1931 and continues to the present, giving the library 50 years of newspapers that aren't in NewspaperArchive. However, the searchability and accessability of NewspaperArchive will be a great timesaver for many people.
Another feature that I'm sure our library users will enjoy is that newspapers from all over the country are included in NewspaperArchive. The are newspapers from Alaska to Florida and almost everywhere in between. Many of these are small town newspapers which will aid people who are doing genealogy.
