{"id":77,"date":"2010-06-01T23:36:01","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T23:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/?p=77"},"modified":"2010-11-10T23:53:37","modified_gmt":"2010-11-10T23:53:37","slug":"genealogy-indexing-and-looking-for-those-obits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"Genealogy, indexing, and looking for those obits . . .!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Newspaper obituaries and death notices are often a first step in uncovering valuable family history information.\u00c2\u00a0 In the California Room of the San Diego Public Library, researchers can search a microfiche index of the <em>San Diego Union<\/em> to look for obituaries.\u00c2\u00a0 A \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in fiche will reveal the exact newspaper date, page and column, of the obituary.\u00c2\u00a0 The obituary or death notice can then be found on microfilm in the Newspaper Room.<\/p>\n<p>The newspaper indexing has an interesting history.\u00c2\u00a0 Librarians at the downtown Carnegie Library (the site of today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Central Library) began creating the subject index in 1930.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0The subject entries were laboriously typed on 3 x 5 cards to create a massive card catalog.\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually, the cards were photographed and the film was printed on microfiche, which researchers now use in the California Room.<\/p>\n<p>The fiche covers much of San Diego history.\u00c2\u00a0 <em>The Herald<\/em> was indexed (1851-1860) and the <em>Union<\/em> from 1868 to 1983.\u00c2\u00a0 The <em>Newsbank<\/em> database in the Newspaper Room carries the indexing forward since 1983.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a major hole in the indexing. \u00c2\u00a0The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153infamous gap\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from 1903 to 1930 occurred when the library ran out of funds.\u00c2\u00a0 Staff time became too expensive and the indexing project ended without completion.<\/p>\n<p>The current California Room staff has been slowly filling \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the gap\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for the all-important obituaries and death notices by entering the missing information into an <em>Access<\/em> database.\u00c2\u00a0 So far, about fourteen years of the gap have been filled in.\u00c2\u00a0 A pdf version of the database is available here: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/deaths_obits_1915.pdf\">Index to Deaths and Obituaries<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"fblikebutton_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-left: 10px;\"><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sandiegoyesterday.com%2F%3Fp%3D77&amp;layout=standard&amp;show-faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:26px\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Newspaper obituaries and death notices are often a first step in uncovering valuable family history information.\u00c2\u00a0 In the California Room of the San Diego Public Library, researchers can search a microfiche index of the San Diego Union to look for obituaries.\u00c2\u00a0 A \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in fiche will reveal the exact newspaper date, page and column, of [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[62,63],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-miscellany","tag-obituaries","tag-san-diego-union"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pVcZn-1f","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sandiegoyesterday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}