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Mining for Gold in the Newsprint

© Mark W. Swarthout

So, you read my previous article and then surfed the web for all the information you could find. You found a couple of newspapers that your ancestors were likely to have gotten and armed with the print out from the web site, you visited the Inter Library Load desk at your local library. And, if things worked the way they should, in about two weeks you got a phone call that informs you that your microfilm has arrived. In my case I had five rolls of microfiche and thirty days to do something with them. Now what?

You sit down at the reader and started going through them.

It is a daunting task to begin with, even a small four page weekly has over 200 pages a year and most films will have several years on them. Here are some tricks I learned that made things move faster:

1. Choose your microfiche reader carefully! If you haven't used one recently, get one of the librarians to give you a quick run through on how to operate the machine. You also want one that allows you to make copies of the screen.

My library has three separate machines that all look alike at first. I've since learned that they have three different ranges of magnification. Choose the magnification that works best for you. I usually stay in the middle ranges.

Also check to see that the viewing screen, lenses and guides are clean and not smudged or scratched. Sometimes you'll find it hard to distinguish between a dirty machine and just an old, scratched roll of microfiche. And dirty lenses and plates can make an already eye straining job more difficult.

2. Most papers are pretty consistent about where certain items are published. For the first couple of issues, you need to go through them carefully and learn the layout of the paper you are reading.

In my specific instance, I quickly determined that the first page consisted entirely of reading material. It literally contained excerpts from novels and stories as well as some poetry. No big news headlines such as we are used to there! The second page began with news items from around the nation and world, and somewhere about the middle of the second page, was a column entitled The Bee, where the editor wrote about local items and copied items of interest from surrounding newspapers. Legal notices followed this on page three and then advertising filled the remainder.

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