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3 Free Quick Reference Guides to Make You a Master Newspaper Researcher

6/17/2017

5 Comments

 
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​To become a successful historic newspaper researcher, you need to make a small investment in time to learn the "tricks of the trade."

Here are 3 downloadable one page Quick Reference Guides that will help you!
​
9 Steps to Success in Searching Old Newspapers for Your Ancestors

Searching for articles about your ancestors online in old newspapers really is pretty easy.  The problem is that it is so easy that researchers who don't understand the process of getting old newspapers to be scanned and indexed will miss many positive results.  Optical Character Recognition (OCR) often does not pick up the exact letters in a name or word that you are searching, for a variety of reasons.  Anyway, there are a variety of tricks that will greatly enhance your chances of finding articles about your ancestors.

​Download this 
Quick Reference Guide in pdf format at the link below and apply the tips and you will be more successful.  

Click below to download the pdf file
9_steps_to_newspaper_success.pdf
File Size: 226 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File


10 Clever Ways to Find More Ancestor Articles While Searching Old Newspapers
​

As an aficionado of newspaper research for genealogy and family history, I have done a lot of searching. Most recently it has been of the online variety. One can be quite successful in spite of the limitations of poor quality source material, scanning deficiencies and OCR limitations. The best results are usually because of good planning, rather than simple surname searching and hoping. Here are a few tips and techniques that you can employ to find that elusive ancestor article that you may have been trying to find. 

​Download this Quick Reference Guide in pdf format at the link below and apply the tips and you will be more successful.  
​
Click below to download the pdf file​
10_clever_ways.pdf
File Size: 151 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File


The Best Way to Find Hidden Newspaper Articles
​

If you search online for newspaper articles, you know that it is often challenging.  This is primarily because OCR is not perfect and that old newsprint can often have creases, tears, ink spots and other errors. This creates an index that often is filled often with a mumbo jumbo of letters that do not result in accurate names and the like when the index is created.  Thus your searches may not include all the articles that you seek.

This can easily be remedied by YOU!  Just change the letters in the search criteria and DELIBERATELY misspell. Refer to this collection of letter pairs as shown in the Quick Reference Guide that you can download below.  You will get much better results, guaranteed.

Download this Quick Reference Guide in pdf format at the link below and apply the tips and you will be more successful.  
​
Click below to download the pdf file​
the_best_way.pdf
File Size: 201 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Good Luck - and Happy Hunting!
___________________________________

Please Share!


5 Comments
Judith
6/11/2017 01:48:30 pm

I'm having difficulty getting this downloaded. If I click on the headline link, it just opens a new tab with the same page. If I save the images of the tip sheets & open it, it is fuzzy when I zoom in to make it large enough to read. Any tips for me to get a readable copy? Thanks!

Reply
Kenneth R Marks
6/11/2017 01:59:31 pm

There are 3 "Download File" links further down the page. Click on whichever one of those that you wish to download are all 3 if you wish. It should bring up your computers' Download Dialog where you can determine where you wish to store the pdf file.

Reply
Gail
6/18/2017 08:59:15 am

Another tip is to search newspapers in nearby/bordering states to a known location for your relative. I recently searched for a relative in the 1870 time frame in the next state over, thinking I might find articles about him teaching for a short time in that locale. I did find something about him, not regarding teaching but it was an excellent civil war related find.

Reply
Carol Middlebrooks link
9/11/2017 12:19:39 pm

Is thas a free website for folks or is it fee paid to subscribe to?

advise.

Reply
Kenneth R Marks
9/12/2017 08:17:22 am

Carol, this site is free. If you subscribe, you get an email once a week with all the new articles that have been written and posted for the previous week.

Reply



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