Good news for Chicago genealogists

The April issue of the Chicago Genealogical Society's newsletter includes two items of good news, and Facebook adds a third:

* From CGS president Julie Ann Benson, CGS contributions have aided the Newberry Library in acquiring seven reels of Chicago "delayed birth" applications from the Family History Library. And contributions will also facilitate the digitization of nearly 40 years of the Chicago Genealogist quarterly.

* From CGS member Wesley Johnston comes news that the on-line Hyde Park Herald newspaper for 24 August 1960 published the full assessment list for Hyde Park Township, alphabetical by street name and then by street number within each. Names of landowners and valuations for improvements and land are included. No index. It's not really a head-of-household census but it's as close as we'll see until 2032!

* Writing at the Chicago Genealogy group on Facebook, Jennifer Holik-Urban alerts us all to the Newberry Library's online version of the Foreign Language Press Survey -- thousands of translations from articles of non-English newspapers made by Works Progress Administration employees during the Great Depression. I have yet to figure out the search function, but the collection is browseable in several ways. For additional information check this post at ChicagoGenealogy and this explanatory note on the FLPS web site. And bear in mind the usual methodological cautions: these words are not the original source. They were translated and transcribed from the original publications; if any fine points of meaning or spelling are involved, don't rest content with your own guess as to what the on-line material actuall says.

Historical note: this resource would not exist if the federal government had not combated the 1930s depression by hiring unemployed people to do needed jobs.

Two good free resources via Scout Report

The Internet Scout Project dates back to the DOS and maybe even the green-screen Apple era, and they're still at it. Recently they highlighted two genealogically useful resources:

From the Iowa Digital Library, a collection on African American Women in Iowa. There are a variety of resources here, with more scope than the title makes it sound. Being a text guy, I gravitated to the typewritten 27 June 1963 newsletter of the Fort Madison NAACP. It is (I must say) rather like a blog, with lots of specific news entries: "Freesmeier's Dairy has hired one of our number, Thomas Humburd," calling off the boycott and encouraging patronage. And it is searchable!

And completely searchable images of "every known issue" of Chicago's Hyde Park Herald, covering most of the 1880s and then everything since 1926 -- a primo resource right into the 21st century!

Catching up with the Newberry

If you're just in from Mars and haven't yet started following the intermittent "Genealogy News" blog of Chicago's Newberry Library, here's what you missed in the last month:

FamilySearch Labs is putting up Cook County birth certificates.

The Hyde Park Herald newspaper is digitizing its archives, including 1950s, 1960s, and 1990s so far.

Selected items from the Newberry's own collections are up on Internet Archive, including primarily church histories and a number of specialized directories it would be easy to miss: Board of Trade, "Jewish Community Blue book," law and medical directories, "Colored people's blue-book," real-estate dealers, and a Bohemian directory and almanac.