the most useful newspaper archive site yet...

[Joe Bausch]

There are over 12 million pages of old New York area newspapers at the following web site:

http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

I've found it very useful and I hope you will too.  The interface appears a bit clunky, but the search engine is quite powerful.  Please read the FAQ section to learn how to best use it.  If you learn any tricks, please let me know.  

And consider donating to the fellow that runs the site, Tom Tryniski.  The amount of work he has put into what is pretty much a one man operation is incredible, as documented here:

http://tinyurl.com/2d8rvmt

[Neil_Crafter]

nice work Joe passing on your find to everyone. All class 
Neil

[Joe Bausch]

nice work Joe passing on your find to everyone. All class 
Neil

Thanks for the kind words Neil.

Please note that the site can get very bogged down at times and getting a hit to appear can take many seconds.... sometimes closer to a minute.  My suggestion is to try your searches in less busy times (I find very early in the mornings to be best).

[Bradley Anderson]

Joe,

Last winter I rolled a lot of microfilm from newspapers at the Detroit Public Library. Without a database, that kind of research can be very tedious. You are basically rolling film with the hope of finding something on luck.

But the superintendent from Tam O Shanter, John Cooney found out that the best place to find old golf articles is in the Sunday Sports Section during the months of March, April, May, and June. Sure enough, that's where we found articles about the beginnings of our clubs. When I searched the other months of the year, and the various week day editions, very little information turned up.

[Joe Bausch]

Joe,

Last winter I rolled a lot of microfilm from newspapers at the Detroit Public Library. Without a database, that kind of research can be very tedious. You are basically rolling film with the hope of finding something on luck.

But the superintendent from Tam O Shanter, John Cooney found out that the best place to find old golf articles is in the Sunday Sports Section during the months of March, April, May, and June. Sure enough, that's where we found articles about the beginnings of our clubs. When I searched the other months of the year, and the various week day editions, very little information turned up.

Bradley,

John Cooney's advice was very good, and useful if you are very limited with time to spend searching in the library.

Note, in many Philly papers, there has frequently been much info from Dec to Feb as well.  Some of the best stuff I've ever uncovered (like the beginning of the J.E. Ford North American reviews) was in those months.

[Chris Shaida]

This is a great site.  One of the big finds through this site was the NY Evening Telegram series in 1915 on 'Where New York Plays its Golf' with layouts and writeups on about 25 NY area courses.  Joe already posted many of the layouts from that series (and I posted a few others as well) on the thread Ed Oden started on historic layouts and routings. 

If anyone is interested in the full articles you can get them by doing a clever search on the site Joe referenced above or you can click on this link

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B_SQWYOLNYhlYzE0ZmU1ODktMGRlMC00YTMzLTk3ZTctMmFhZDM2ZTA3YWMw&hl=en

which is GoogleDocs folder that has each of those articles already downloaded as a pdf as well as some of the embedded layouts separately stored as jpgs.  Exactly the same articles but the GoogleDocs folders should be a bit quicker. 

Now if only they had updated that series every several years...

[George_Bahto]

Joe - thanks  - great stuff

right off the bat I find that Raynor did more work than I originally thought at Nassau CC on the North Shore of Long Island - well he was scheduled to by the sound of the article but I'll have to search further to see if he actually did any more the 5th hole there

It sounds like there might have been much more

I have found references of his, a various courses, where he said various holes were "reflective" holes at Nassau CC

[Joe Bausch]

I thought I would 'bump' this thread but also add to it as well. That Fulton History site above is fantastic.  But as good as the search engine is, it is still far from perfect.  If you are willing to search manually through, for instance, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, you'll find all kinds of neat stuff the search engine simply does not pick up.

[Phil_the_Author]

Joe,

How does one search the site manually. e.g. Brooklyn Eagle...

[Joe Bausch]

Click on the little box near the top labeled "FAQ_HELP_INDEX", then on the box of text that comes up, click on the link 'here' in the first sentence, which is this:

If you wish to see an Index of the Newspapers displayed on this site, or wish to browse the different papers, click Here. Please note, this link will just show Newspapers and not other Documents.

From there you can manually search the pages of papers by year.  The Daily Eagle in on page 3 of the links.  Unfortunately the pages you click on are not dated, but they usually are in chronological order.  Yes, it is very tedious. 

 

[Phil_the_Author]

Thank you Joe. I'm used to tedious!

[Joe Bausch]

Just today the Fulton site was updated with many more newspapers.

P.S.  Use the fuzzy searching box to increase your hits.

P.S.2. Consider sending the owner of the site, Tom Tryniski, a little cash to show your appreciation.

[Neil_Crafter]

Thanks for the heads up Joe, found a couple of new Mackenzie mentions :-)

[V. Kmetz]

This site is on par with almost any university-level data base I have experienced.

This post is invaluable, thank you so much!

cheers

vk