Travel Back in Time

I think the digitized newspapers on Montana Newspapers and Chronicling America are the best thing since sliced bread. Maybe even the best thing since before sliced bread. 

Never explored them? Stop reading RIGHT NOW (I promise, we'll be here for you to come back to), click on this map, and choose a newspaper close to where you live. Then go to an early paper published on your birthday (or during your birthday week). 

Are you back? Good! Find anything interesting? Did you get sucked into exploring? I thought so! 

The fact is, I've never met anyone--kid or adult--who didn't like to read historic newspapers. They are, as my colleague Zoe Ann Stoltz says, the closest thing we have to a time machine.

That's why I was so pleased to learn from our Digital Projects Librarian Natasha Hollenbach that the Montana Historical Society has new content available (and a total of 579,875 pages!) to search and browse on the web site Montana Newspapers: 

• The Thompson Falls Public Library has finished their huge push to make the Sander County Ledger/Sanders County Independent Ledger available. With this addition of the Sanders County Independent-Ledger (1925-1929) the whole surviving run from 1917 to 1963 is now available. Unfortunately a gap since exists from 1921 to 1924 but as far as we know no copies of these issues have survived. This particular date range is a great addition, since it was a new find which had never been microfilmed. 
• Hellgate High School has added the Hellgate Lance (1964-1982 and 2013-2017) to their previous run of 1983-2008.
• The Lewistown Public Library has made possible the addition of the Fergus County Argus (1920-1929), which adds to their contribution of Lewistown papers.
• Celebrate the addition of a new city with Grass Range Review (1917-1923), made possible by the Grass Range Community Foundation. 
• The River Press has made it possible to extend the date range for The River Press another 19 years, so 1889-1902 and 1915-1976 is now available.
• The University of Montana Western and the Dillon Public Library has added three years of the The Dillon Tribune (2013-2015). Dillon now has papers available from 1883 to 2015!

Montana Newspapers is one of two sites where Montana's digitized newspapers reside free of charge for researchers. The other is Chronicling America, where in addition to many other titles, you can find The River Press (1880-1888 and 1902-1914) and the Fergus County Argus (1886-1906). 

Looking for ideas on how to use these with your students? Here is a past post about activities I conducted with third through fifth graders in a gifted and talented class. Here's a post from Natasha on Using Historic Newspapers to Increase Student Understanding of World War I and here's yet a post on Resources to Help You Use Chronicling America. Looking for more inspiration? Edsitement has more suggestions for you.