Useful websites

[Janet]

It's worth underscoring the usefulness of the free Fulton History site, fultonhistory.com, for old newspaper searches. I've used it for years, with sometimes spectacular results.

Pivot to Digital: A visit with the man who has digitized more newspaper pages than the Library of Congress
The article in the above link makes me aware once again of the enormous amount of material available there, and has opened my eyes to how much more is being constantly added.

One hint I would pass on to anyone wanting to mine its database is that I don't find its own search engine particularly user-friendly. But there is an easy alternative. Use your regular Google search in any browser, and after your search terms add a word space followed by site:fultonhistory.com (with no word space after the colon).

You can also use the built-in search engine on Fulton History as described here by Kiterunner:

Originally Posted by kiterunner

You don't have to be a member of ancestry or FMP to use the Fulton History site and it is free. I hadn't come across it before I saw it on that Rootschat thread. Just click on the link below and when the page loads, click where it says "Enter" or "Press here". Then you should see a page with search boxes on the left and you can enter the name you are looking for, and it might work best if you select "the exact phrase" from the dropdown menu. Then click on "Search" and you should get a list of newspapers that it has found matches in, and you can click each one in turn to see the newspaper page containing the article.

http://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

If you want a good comparison, you could for instance try searching each way with the name of my relative, children's book author Helen Fuller Orton, and you'll clearly see the difference.