As a card-carrying member of the Cincinnati Public Library system, I just discovered I have access to full text searcheable archives of everything the New York Times has ever printed, going back to 1851!  You just go to http://www.CincinnatiLibrary.org, select Research, then Databases, then the Proquest Historical link thingy, and you have to log in with your library card number and PIN (which defaults to the last four digits of the phone number you gave them when you signed for the card), and boom, access to EVERYTHING is yours.

 

It's insane.  Put in Cincinnati, between 01/01/1977 and 02/01/1977 and you get articles about the last time the Ohio and Mississippi froze over...full .pdf's of each article.  Or you can browse the whole paper...

 

That's where I've been spending just about every waking minute that I haven't been working, sleeping or drunk...oh, and they've got other stuff, though nothing that goes back so far - other databases are available though, including the Columbus Dispatch for five or ten years, along with 200 other publications - but nothing like the NYTimes back catalogue...wow.

 

^The downtown library also has about 5 German Cincinnati papers on microfilm dating from about 1850-1910 as well as everything in the defunct english language Times-Star.  Kind of amazing shuffling through those, you run into all kinds of interesting stuff you weren't looking for like the day the circuit breaker was invented, a street widening plan for Havana, and all kinds of other junk. 

Columbus Public (and the State Library) digital index for the Dispatch only goes back to 1986 (and even then, you'd have to physically be in the library to access it).

I only have a modest request.  Can I have a digital index for the Dispatch for the last 50 years?  Please?!

(At least the article index, which goes back to 1962 IIRC, at Columbus's Main Library makes searching the Dispatch almost palatable)

 

Through some of the other Cincinnati Library-available links, there's full-text searches available for the following:

 

Akron Beacon Journal, from 1984

Cincinnati Enquirer, from 1999

Buffalo News, from 1989

Cincinnati Post, from 1990

Cleveland Plain Dealer, from 1991

Dayton Daily News, from 1990

Kentucky Post, from 1990

Toledo Blade, from 1996

Washington Post, from 1977

 

...but the Columbus Dispatch isn't in that group...it's in another database, but only goes back to 2003...

 

^The downtown library also has about 5 German Cincinnati papers on microfilm dating from about 1850-1910 as well as everything in the defunct english language Times-Star.  Kind of amazing shuffling through those, you run into all kinds of interesting stuff you weren't looking for like the day the circuit breaker was invented, a street widening plan for Havana, and all kinds of other junk. 

Fast forwarding through the old microfilms is just utterly unreal.

You find so much stuff other than what you are looking for it is hard to discipline yourself to just go to what you wanted in the first place.

^Yeah, and I've noticed a gap in the indexing from around 1921 to 1924.  This represents a critical gap for me since this is when the bulk of the subway was constructed, and there are dozens of articles in the years leading up to and following but not during construction.  I'm not looking forward to it but the only way to find those articles is going to be scrolling through every single newpaper from those years. 

 

 

Nevermind then.  :laugh:

 

Ink, that link takes me to a page where the username is populated as REFURL and requesting a password...alas...

 

Theres some interesting and funny articles about the courthouse riot.