NewspaperARCHIVE: In the news

A favorite online news repository for newspapers is NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

I'm now researching a posting focusing on one branch of our family and what I learned over the decades using that family's archived hometown paper. Information included business announcements, photographs, advertisements, obituaries, marriage announcements, synagogue related-activities and even social notes indicating where the family vacationed. These resources also enabled me to connect other branches in nearby states that I had wondered about but couldn't prove. Stay tuned for this posting.

Alexa.com has just ranked the site as the second most visited genealogy database website in the world. It also ranked it at number three for all genealogy services and at number nine for all genealogy websites.

Based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, online marketing manager Dave Stoddard is quoted in the press release:

"Alexa rankings have confirmed our goal, which is to firmly establish ourselves as an invaluable resource for family historians, whether dedicated researchers or weekend hobbyists," said Dave Stoddard, Online Marketing Manager. "We provide a huge number of unique newspaper pages, but compliment that with a powerful search tool and plenty of great unique articles designed to help our users get the most out of NewspaperARCHIVE."

New features and upgrades were recently launched, including a series of blogs and a better search engine. More improvements are on the way.

NewspaperARCHIVE.com was launched in 1999 by Heritage Microfilm. It is the largest historical newspaper database online, covering 1759 to the present, 3,000 newspaper titles and 762 cities. Users can search fully keyword and date.