Thanks to a local partnership in Kingston, Ontario, we can access online the Kingston Whig Standard newspaper and its predecessors from 1810 to 1848. The digital newspapers are part of a larger initiative, called Digital Kingston, that was created to showcase digital collections in the Kingston area.
The newspapers can be accessed from the Home page of the Digital Kingston website.
Image from the British Whig newspaper, June 17, 1834.
The newspaper index project began about ten years ago, led by the Kingston Frontenac Public Library (KFPL) in partnership with the City of Kingston, Queen’s University, the Ontario Genealogical Society Kingston Branch, and the museum community.
KFPL staff started the project by scanning their own card catalogue index of the newspaper. They next scanned the original newspapers housed in the W.D. Jordan Special Collections Library at Queen’s University and linked them to the card catalogue index.
KFPL is now investigating the possibility of producing scans of microfilmed newspapers at the university, but no timeline has been determined.
When conducting my own search, I sometimes found a link to the full text, but often came across the disappointing message, “Sorry, there is no full-text PDF available for this date.” The reason for this is that Queen’s collection of newspapers from the early 19th-century is incomplete, so no image could be photographed for some of the index entries. Nevertheless, from the index card entry, I was able to see a one-sentence description of the article, name and date of the newspaper, and the page and column number, allowing me to look elsewhere for the newspaper.
Digital Kingston was made possible by funding received from the Ministry of Culture’s Library Strategic Development Fund and KFPL.
Many thanks to Lester Webb at KFPL who patiently answered my questions about this project.
