Where to find old Albany newspapers

In the last couple of entries, we presented George Rogers Howell’s inventory of the papers that had been published in Albany up to the 1880s, and those that were still very much going concerns when he was writing his Bi-Centennial History of the County of Albany in 1886. Many of these newspapers (and others that Howell may not have included) are still available, in some form or another.

The New York State Library keeps a very helpful listing of all Albany County newspapers that are available on microfilm and paper throughout New York. If you’re looking for The Argus, you may well be in luck. The more obscure papers remain more obscure. The library’s listing is here.

The Library of Congress’s Chronicling America project is sadly short on digitized New York newspapers generally, and Albany papers are completely absent from its list. But if you’re researching elsewhere, it may be helpful; it’s here. However, if you just want some bibliographical information or are searching for locations that the State Library may not have covered, you can search the LOC’s entire database. It also includes some digitized forms that may not be publicly accessible but available to researchers (just to make sure the history doesn’t leak out).

Anyone who has been doing upstate New York historical or genealogical research in the past decade or more has likely been immeasurably aided not by a library or archive site, but by one determined man with a scanner and a will: Tom Tryniski’s Fultonhistory.com has reached well past Fulton for many years, and is the premiere resource for a wide range of newspapers. Highly searchable, very well-scanned.

I’m reminded by a commenter below that there is the collection of New York State Historic Newspapers.

And for a very local view, if you’re interested in more recent events in Bethlehem, the Spotlight from that community is online.

The Albany Institute of History and Art has a collection of newspapers; I don’t know their rules for access, but the inventory is located here.

And of course there’s the Albany Public Library.