Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Explore the Chicago Examiner, 1908-1918, for Free

Recently Bonnie Brown, a fellow Chicago researcher, sent a message to the IL-COOK-CHICAGO-L list at Rootsweb to make sure that we were aware of a free online resource for Chicago newspaper research -- Harold Washington Library's digital images for the Chicago Examiner, 1908-1918. It wasn't long before people began posting news of their success in finding family-related information. If you haven't explored images, you should!

If you want to browse the newspaper by topic, you can access it through a link from the library's Digital Collections page. Highlights include "Cubs World Series," "White Socks World Series," "Eastland Disaster," and "Plan of Chicago." Other topics include "Jane Addams and Hull House," and the "1912 Olympics."

If you want to search the newspaper, go to the library's main page, click on "A-Z Research Databases," click on the letter "C," and select "Chicago Examiner."

The default view will let you search using various combinations of words

 but I'd recommend using the other search options, too. These include "Selected fields," "By proximity," and "By date."


Give it a try. And if you find something you'd like to share, post a comment.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for this link. I knew an extended family member had died in a car vs train accident during the 1908-1918 time period, but beyond a few articles in the Trib, couldn't find much. The Chicago Examiner had three articles - including a photo of the deceased family member. Hope they make more available from an earlier time period!

Reed said...

Thanks, Cynthia!

I spent a few hours with this last night and found over a dozen articles, including photos of my paternal grandmother, her sister and their mother.

It helps that they have fairly distinctive names, but in any case the search engine did a decent job of making accurate hits and avoiding off-topic selections.

It also helps that they were busy in "Society" and other newsworthy activities such as the arts (barefoot dancing! with pictures!!), the World Peace Convention and women's suffrage.

Thanks again. I would have missed this entirely.

—Reed

ChicagoGenealogy said...

It's an amazing resource but I can't take any credit for the find. Hats off to Bonnie for sharing with us!

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