Wisconsin leapfrogs into the 21st century

I hope someone more cosmopolitan can correct me, but isn't Wisconsin the first state genealogy society to put its flagship publication on line? The move was dictated by finances but it's also a visual upgrade, and it coincides with a push to publish readable articles in addition to compiled and abstracted records. It's a combined January-April 2009 issue, 52 pages in PDF format available to members. Join at Wisconsin State Genealogical Society. Included in this quarter's contents:

"Dane County -- Inventory from the Lower and Upper McFarland Cemetery"

"Fond du Lac County -- Rienzi Cemetery Study: A Search for Unmarked Graves," by new co-editor Tracy Reinhardt. Another precedent question: who else, where else, has tried to study how many unmarked burials a particular cemetery contains?

"Fond du Lac County -- FDL Public Library Seefeld Local History Room"

"Marquette County -- Thomas Mozley Writes from the Wisconsin Frontier: 'If I am spared I shall see for myself,'" by Harold Henderson (that's me)

"Wood County -- Governor Awards Marshfield Public Library for Genealogy Database"

Why You Want To Have Relatives in Wood County, Wisconsin

NEHGS e-News (22 June, not on line yet), which has a fondness for Wisconsin, calls attention to the Wood County records (both on and off line) at the McMillan Memorial Library in Wisconsin Rapids. Not only are the usual sources (such as local newspapers, so often a source of confusion) exceptionally well described, but on line sources include city directories back to 1892, WWI soldiers' accounts, the 1923 county history, and a 1970 book of county place names. Off line sources include a locally produced index of pre-1907 vital records as published in local newspapers -- if you're looking to find every record of your ancestors, as you should, this is a prime opportunity to compare the items this index points to with the online index of pre-1907 vital records at the State Historical Society and those vital records. Plus the library holds some Family History Library microfilms covering some non-obvious sources, including 14 films of school attendance registers for Wisconsin Rapids.

Reasons to wish your ancestors died in eastern Ohio and central Wisconsin

The New England Historical and Genealogical Society eNews for 5 March (which should be archived here but doesn't seem to be) highlights two Midwestern libraries' online databases:

nearly 25,000 obituaries from the weekly Louisville Herald in Stark County, Ohio, by way of the Louisville Public Library, and

more than 200,000 newspaper records from the Marshfield [Wisconsin] Public Library, covering Wood, Marathon, and Clark counties.