Obtaining Old Newspapers

In my last post, I had a comment that inquired how I obtained old newspapers. Thus far, I have ordered them from the North Carolina State Archives and State Library. They have a whole bunch of North Carolina Newspapers on microfilm as a result of the United States Newspaper Program. While they do offer interlibrary loan for the newspapers, I decided to take advantage of their microfilm duplication service – they charge $12 a reel. This is a much better option for me than interlibrary loan b/c I don’t have the time to go to the library and spend large chunks of time to look through them within a specific time frame and then return them, so it’s been easier for me to just own them and then I don’t have to return anything.
Even better, while I feel lucky to have the Nashville Public Library to be able to go to and do digital scans of the microfilm, I have recently found a service that will convert my microfilm to digital images for me. I plan to send them two reels this week and their turn around time is two days, so by the weekend, I should have enough digital newspaper images to keep me busy indexing for a couple of months. They are not cheap, but for the money I pay to the drop-in daycare that I use for Kaleya when I do go to the library, a reel costs me equivalent to two trips to the library. So, it will be WELL worth it!
Now that I know the library does microfilm duplication, they also do the same for all the county records they have on microfilm. So, next month, I plan to purchase some county records on microfim, namely, some from Jones County (see previous post).