NewspaperARCHIVE.com Announces First Genealogist Columnist

The following announcement was written by NewspaperARCHIVE.com:

Cedar Rapids, Iowa - October 14, 2008 -- Cedar Rapids-based NewspaperARCHIVE.com, the world's largest online historic newspaper database, has partnered with Phyllis Matthews Ziller, M.L.I.S., webmaster of Genwriters.com, to showcase genealogy writing. This partnership will allow members and visitors to NewspaperARCHIVE.com access to useful and vital information about conducting genealogical research using historic newspapers.

"The value of newspaper research is often overlooked by genealogists," said Phyllis Matthews Ziller who has had many success stories with the information she has gleaned from historic newspapers.

New content written by Ms. Ziller will be integrated into the new Users sidebar on the NewspaperARCHIVE.com website, allowing both members and visitors to easily access the information. The articles will be provided at no cost to visitors.

Phyllis Matthews Ziller is the first of several new writers who will be featured on the NewspaperARCHIVE.com website. Writers are selected for the quality of their work, the subject and scope of their interests, and their interest in historic newspapers.

Phyllis Matthews Ziller's first article can be found at http://www.newspaperarchive.com/GenealogistsFullArticles.aspx?c=articlephylliszillerfull.

Writers interested in contributing individual articles of that make use of archival papers in the areas of genealogy, sports, history, or as school lesson plans should contact Senior Content Developer Paul Stokstad at 888.870.0484 ext. 33.

About Heritage Microfilm, Inc.

Heritage Microfilm, Inc., of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a major archival microfilm and digitization company. Heritage Microfilm was founded in 1997 and quickly became one of the premier newspaper preservation vendors in North America. Heritage Microfilm maintains a humidity and temperature-controlled storage facility holding hundreds of thousands of reels of master microfilm and is a certified Kodak ImageGuard™ Lab. They work with tens of thousands of newspaper publishers and libraries throughout the world.

In 1999, Heritage Microfilm launched the brand NewspaperARCHIVE.com, the world's largest historical newspaper database online. NewspaperARCHIVE.com contains tens of millions of newspaper pages from 1759 to present, spanning almost 3,000 newspaper titles and 762 cities. Every newspaper in the archive is fully searchable by keyword and date making it easy to quickly explore historical content. Anyone interested in finding more information about Heritage Microfilm and NewspaperARCHIVE.com can visit www.heritagemicrofilm.com or www.newspaperarchive.com.

About Phyllis Matthews Ziller, M.L.I.S.

Phyllis Matthews Ziller holds a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of South Florida. She is the editor of "Speak" the newsletter for the Genealogical Speakers Guild, and "Columns," the newsletter for the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors.

Phyllis is a member of the National Genealogical Society, the Association of Professional Genealogists, the Genealogical Society of New Jersey, and the North Carolina Genealogical Society.

Her website, Genwriters, can be found at http://www.genwriters.com.

Comments

[Diane]

I recently subscribed to newspaperarchive.com and have been using it. However, I was surprised to receive no email acknowledging the registration. When I had problems logging in late last week, sent several emails and to date, have received no response. My email isn't blocking them. Am wondering if this is typical for this vendor.

[Mary W. B.]

Just thought the readers may like to know that an added perk to belonging to the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society -nygbs.org- besides their query pages, wonderful speakers and programs and Early American Newspapers on line is the Newspaper Archive (free with membership to nygbs)as of a few weeks ago! Works very well!!

[Juliette]

Just a follow up to Diane's comment posted on October 15. I also received no acknowledgement of my recent subscription to newspaperarchive.com, though my payment posted promptly. I was able to use the site for one day, but subsequently have gotten error messages saying my subscription is inactive. Three e-mails so far and I haven't been able to raise anyone at the company for help. Verrrryyyyyy frustrating, especially as the site is so rich in materials.

[Philip]

I have too have not received any responses from Newspaperarchive.com. My payment posted promptly as well. I did not receive any email verifying my registration and I was not able to pick my own password upon registration. The registration process chose my password for me. It was a hard one to remember but I figured I would get an email with my registration information including the password. So as soon as I was registered I was off and running and was up until the wee hours of the morning. The next day when I went to log on I could not remember the password so went to my inbox but did not have anything from newspaperarchive. I have sent them emails, clicked on forgot password and entered my addy. I have done this over and over but have not received a single email. There is no phone number listed anywhere for contact. This is no way to run a business.

[Victoria Sexton]

I signed up for a one month trial to newspaperarchive.com. I found the site unhelpful because I couldn't even read any of the sources I pulled up. I sent an e-mail, along with my membership number to them before the trial expired, cancelling the service. They have continued to bill my account despite numerous e-mails and phone calls. Their phone number is not listed on the site but I got it off my bank statement. It is 888-8452887. So far I have been billed about $40.00. I have received no refund. SAVE YOURSELF FROM BEING RIPPED OFF AND DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO THIS SERVICE.

[Jason Krueger]

Good morning,

My name is Jason Krueger and I am the Customer Service Manager at NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

I would like to take a moment to formally apologize for any negative experiences that any of you have encountered when utilizing www.NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

It is my goal to personally do what I can to maintain positive customer relationships and if any of you would be willing to contact me I would like to take a moment of your time to make things right for you.

Additionally, if anybody just has a question that they would like to ask, please feel free to contact me as well.

I can be reached at 1-888-845-2887 ext. 1001 or you can email me at JKrueger@NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

Respectfully,
Jason

[William Otten]

I too have had problems very similar to those described by Victoria Sexton above. I did not find the newspaperarchive.com to serve my needs, I cancelled and yet was still billed for the next months service. I sent a SECOND cancellation request, emailed the verification to their customer service, then personally called and spoke to them. I was assured the charges would be refunded and was even told they would email me verification. The verification never came. I called again and asked to have it resent to my email address and repeated that address several times to make certain they had it. No response. I even called my bankcard telling them NOT to pay the account. Unfortunately, the hold was released on May 03, and newspaperarchive.com got my money again anyhow. The shallow apology by the company above is just that...empty words and they apparently have little regard for their business if they run it so poorly. I have just emailed them a third time to try to resolve this issue and plan to call them once again this Monday, the 16th. At this time, I would NOT RECOMMEND NEWSPAPERARCHIVE.COM

[William Otten]

I want to post an update to my earlier post of 01:35pm 5/16/2009.
Okay, fair is fair and I'm going to post a follow up on my prior post complaining about newspaperarchive.com. I took the company to task pretty succinctly in my emails to them in the past, and in particular an email today, along with some comments about the poor press they've received online(and which I've contributed to above) for their service problems. As it turns out, I received moments ago a direct phone call from the service manager from his home on a Saturday with resolution (fingers crossed) of my situation as I've described in my prior post. Yes, I can't retract the post, nor should I because the problems did occur, but an acceptable reason for why I didn't get any email responses was given, along with the assurances that my refund problems would be resolved. So, I'll give the customer service manager due credit for diligence in calling me directly outside of normal working hours and working with me to my satisfaction. I can dish out the blame, but will rightly serve up praise as well when earned. In this case, undeniably I had problems, and at this point I think they'll be resolved.

[Tom Cloud]

I've used newspaperarchive.com for a long time and it is useful to me.
My primary complaint is that they will take the service off line ** FOR HOURS AT A TIME ** with no notice other than a failure of selected newspapers to load.
It should be a simple task to have a notice put up to site visitors that they are doing maintenance and giving an approximate time the site will be working again.
.... they must think I have nothing better to do than to keep checking to see if their site is working. ... they also don't seem to think their service is important to anyone if they will disable it and give the customer a notification the paper is not available.
They obviously don't think much of their customers.