Finding Microfilmed Newspapers

Newspapers, especially obituaries, are one of my favorite genealogical tools. They are typically filled with family information, sometimes tell is about a person's education and career, tell us what church the person attended and where they are buried. But sometimes finding the newspaper you need can be difficult. There are some on-line resources: Proquest for large cities (New York, Chicago) and NewspaperArchive for many smaller cities. But these only scratch the surface; for the vast majority of cities and towns in the U.S. we must depend on microfilm.

And how do we find the microfilm? We typically have (if we are lucky) a place and a date. Library catalogs usually give us options for searching that include Title, Author, Subject, and Keyword; not very useful. But there is a relatively new network of library catalogs called WorldCat, a network of library catalogs. You can read more about it here. It is also the repository for the U.S. Newspaper Program and, as such, contains information about a huge number of microfilmed newspapers.