Thanks to Kenneth R. Mark’s blog, The Ancestor Hunt, I learned about the Newshound Newspaper Digitization Project, an ongoing effort to digitize British Columbia newspapers, including the Merritt Herald and the Merritt News, which are now being uploaded online.
“The Merritt Herald and Nicola Valley Advocate,” July 1, 1910, page 3. Source: News Hound, arch.tnrdlib.ca.
The eventual goal is to digitize every newspaper that has been published within the Thompson-Nicola Regional District (TNRD), representing 11 municipalities.
The project can be accessed on the Newshound website where you can search by keyword, date or issue and browse. At this point, you can search much of the Merritt Herald as early as 1910 and the Merritt News from 2007 to 2012, with several months still to be digitized within that period.
You can also search and browse three Kamloops newspapers, Daily News (2003-2014), This Week (2008-2013), and the News (1974-1978).
The search feature is easy to use and works quite well. I did my usual search of uncommon family names and was surprised at the results.
The Newshound Newspaper Digitization Project is a partnership between the TNRD Library System, the Nicola Valley Museum and Archives, Thompson Rivers University, and the Kamloops Museum and Archives.
You can read more about this project in the Merritt Herald.
If interested in researching in online newspapers, take a look at The Ancestor Hunt where Mr. Mark works diligently to find online newspapers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.
