The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Digitizing project a boon for researchers
This column was published Jan. 21, 2001
Mine was a relatively early introduction to the Internet.
I first used it around 1979 in my work for Washington State University. It was a tremendous boon when Mount St. Helens erupted and my office used the Internet to communicate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.
For nearly a quarter of a century now I have used and enthused. Early on, I recognized the Internet would marvelously affect my children's lives and especially my grandchildren's. But never in my most fanciful flight of imagination did I dream the Internet would explode as it has.
My model for the Internet was the transportation revolution ushered in by Henry Ford. The Model T radically altered life in America and Europe. I knew the Internet, which was introduced as I approached middle age, would produce a great communications revolution. But the pace of this revolution is much faster than the one my grandfather experienced. I am seeing things, using technologies, I scarce dared believe would be available to my grandchildren.
My excitement flames unabated, and nowhere does it blaze brighter than in its applications to genealogy. Just last week I read news that caused my heart to skip a beat. Bell and Howell recently announced that its information and learning unit will launch the ProQuest Historical Newspapers project. Bell Howell will digitize complete issues of newspapers dating from the 19th century to the present.
It will start with The New York Times. All issues dating back to its first, in 1851, will be included. The Times project is expected to be completed in 15 months. That's 150 years of papers.
The size of this undertaking alone, at The New York Times, truly boggles me. Photos, graphics and advertisements will be included and displayed. Searchers will be able to enter keywords, dates, author's name, etc., in a search engine and receive a results list that will supply bibliographic information, including date, page number and writer's name (where given). To see the text, the user will simply choose the article, and the article image is displayed. Users also will be able to display the full page image of any page in any issue. Searchers also will be able to browse databases by issue, much the same way one browses entire issues of a printed paper.
Bell and Howell announced the project eventually will include hundreds of newspapers, including national, regional and local newspapers. Digitization will begin with U.S. newspapers and eventually will include newspapers from around the world. Bell and Howell will announce newspapers as their digitization begins.
Can nirvana be far? No longer will researchers have to stare their eyes raw on microfilm. Digitized images allow for computerized word searches, with phenomenal speed and accuracy. Bell and Howell is working with libraries on this and other digital projects. Initially, genealogists may have to access this historic database through libraries.
And this is just one digitizing project. Already an astonishing amount of genealogical data is available to researchers via the Internet and compact diskettes. I've already written about cemetery records available on the World Wide Web, which is an Internet protocol that links billions of pages of digital documents and makes them viewable to people all over the world.
Literally thousands upon untold thousands of new pages of genealogical data are posted each day on the World Wide Web.