OGS Families: Newspapers

The November issue of Families, the quarterly publication of the Ontario Genealogical Society, has just been released.

Contents include
Once Upon a Time in Genealogy: Common Family History Myths (or Misbeliefs), by Robbie Gorr (who was a regular contributor to the late lamented Moorshead Magazines),
Certificates and Service Records of soldiers in WWI,
Our Ontario’s newspaper collection, by Drew von Hasselbach,
Tremaine’s Map Company and County Maps as Genealogical Evidence by Graham Segger,
Northbound to Canada: Thomas Best Howells
by Henry Coggeshall Howells IV.

There are also various regular columns.

Drew von Hasselbach’s article quotes from Art Rhyno, chair of Our Digital World, the parent organization to Our Ontario,
which local archives and libraries can hire to digitize
their newspaper and local history collections. He explains that local Ontario newspaper digitization is happening piecemeal because Canada has had no funding for large-scale newspaper digitization efforts. Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) — I’m looking at you. That’s unlike the U.S., where the National Endowment for the Humanities provided leadership. 

Advancing technologies, such as AI, should result in cost reductions. As written in the article, “Digitizing Ontario’s local newspapers is worthwhile and necessary. Newspapers are a global conduit of history.”

It’s late, but not too late. OGS could help by taking up the cause through its often-neglected advocacy mandate.