The following teaser is from an article by Alexandra Connor, and posted August 5, 2017 at The Gazette website. Click here to read the article.
Millions of pages from past issues of The Gazette [Cedar Rapids, Iowa], dating back to 1883, are being made available to the public in a digital, searchable format thanks to a partnership between the newspaper, Cedar Rapids Public Library Foundation, State Historical Society of Iowa and a local company that specializes in digitization.
…The project was announced in February and was unveiled by the State Historical Society with the hopes of preserving more than 12 million pages of Iowa newspapers.
…
So far, 2 million pages have been made available with 1 million more images expected to be added over the course of the next 18 months. Cedar Rapids papers separate from The Gazette, such as the Republican, or earlier namesakes like the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette also have been archived.
The searchable database can be found at cedarrapids.advantage-preservation.com.
I did a bit of searching for ancestors in the database myself. It includes several historic newspapers, as well as City Directories and Phone Books! It’s easy to use. You can search the following items (note that the number of pages is as of today – the numbers will change as further digitizing takes place.
Gazette 1,425,632 pages
Cedar Rapids Gazette 100,337 pages
Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette 96,273 pages
Republican 94,132 pages
Cedar Rapids City Directories 80,160 pages
Cedar Rapids Phonebooks 29,762 pages
Just enter a keyword, or a first and last name in the search box, and search. You can narrow the search by date, and search for a Surname only. An Advanced Search is also available at: http://cedarrapids.advantage-preservation.com/advancesearch?bcn=1&lns=hinchey
Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the heads-up.
