Watchdog Wednesday with Genealogy Bank in Cincinnati

[A series dedicated to keeping up with the quirks of the indispensable big indexing companies, and suggesting workarounds or even actual changes to deal with them...]

Late last month I searched for a man who might well have been mentioned in a Cincinnati newspaper during 1856. I examined the list of six Cincinnati newspapers at Genealogy Bank's Historical Newspapers, and found two with the right coverage -- "Cincinnati Daily Gazette (1835-1883)" and the "Whig (1802-1882)." (Since the coverage varies between the library subscription and the individual subscription, I'm not sure you'll find the same listings on the library version.)

No results for his surname, no results for common surnames, and no results when I left all the search terms blank and hit the search key. I had been prepared not to find him, but I had not been prepared to find nobody at all. Hmmm...

Eventually I found that a blank search on these two papers for the years 1845-1866 yielded 77 hits, and a blank search for the years 1846-1867 yielded 29,074 hits. But a blank search of 1846-1866 yielded -- nothing.

Am I doing something wrong? Or is GenealogyBank claiming to index 20 years' worth of two newspapers when they don't have a single issue up?

I posted the above on a mailing list earlier, and received two helpful suggestions but no answers to the main question. The Library of Congress's newspaper directory suggests that GB may suffer in part from a typo problem, as there doesn't seem to be any Whig paper of those dates in Cincinnati (and in fact since the Whig Party disintegrated in the 1850s we shouldn't expect there to be one).

Meanwhile, it looks like I should follow this trail the old-fashioned way: my Indiana State Library appears to have relevant issues of the Cincinnati Daily Gazette, and their account of what they hold appears to be much more specific, showing the gaps.

Can you get by with the library version...

...of Genealogy Bank? On the official blog, Tom Kemp advises a questioner that the individual subscription version ("Genealogy Bank") has more than 3800 newspaper titles [most, of course, are not full runs], whereas the library version ("America's Genealogy Bank") has about 2200 titles in its "Historical Newspapers" section.

I compared the Genealogy Bank newspaper source list as of 2 May with my local library's newspaper source list from America's Genealogy Bank, for Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Overall GB has 35 titles in those five states, AGB 79. Both have weaker coverage of Michigan than the other states.

Let's make that specific. If you're like me and try to cheap out by using the library version, as of 2 May you would miss the following titles (date ranges vary and are at the site linked above) --

in Illinois, Centralia Sentinel, Chicago Herald, Chicago Times, Daily Inter Ocean, Illinois Advocate, Illinois Emigrant, Latin Times, Nauvoo Expositor (one issue only), Noticia Mundial, Quincy Whig, Sol de Chicago (one issue only), Sunday Times, Vida Latina, and Vorbote.

in Indiana, Amigo del Hogar, Indiana Centinel, Indiana Democrat, Indianapolis Sentinel, New Albany Daily Ledger, Terre Haute Express, and Wabash Courier.

in Michigan, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, and Kalamazoo Gazette, and Weekly Detroit Free Press and supp...The Household.

in Ohio, Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Cincinnati Daily Gazette, Democratic Herald, Elyria Republican, Greene County Torch-Light, Ohio Republican, Painesville Telegraph, Plain-Dealer, Spirit of the West, Supporter, Western Herald, Wooster Republican.

in Wisconsin, Guardia, Jeffersonian Democrat, Milwaukee Journal of Commerce, Milwaukee Sentinel, Wisconsin Chief, Wisconsin Free Democrat.

Obviously this list will change, and obviously not all titles are of equal interest or cover comparable date ranges. Where the two services overlap I didn't see any differences in the date ranges covered. I don't own stock in this company, I don't work for them, and at present I'm not even a subscriber. But if you're watching the pennies now you can better judge what the effect may be on your research, and of course you can compare the two sites for your areas of interest.