The Ancestor Hunt
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Newspapers
  • Newspaper Links
  • Obituaries
  • BMD Records
  • Photos
  • Yearbooks
  • Directories
  • By Location
  • Cemetery Records
  • Divorce Records
  • Naturalizations
  • Immigration
  • Mortuary Records
  • Church Records
  • School Records
  • Voter Records
  • Coroner Records
  • Probate and Wills
  • Alumni Records
  • Newsletter Page
  • Tools
  • Genealogy News
  • California Genealogy
  • Videos
  • Fun With Newspapers
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

Historical Newspaper Research - Lesson 12 - Choosing a Site to Search

9/25/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture
This is next in a series of educational posts, intended to provide you with information that will rapidly improve the skills needed to find pertinent newspaper articles from historical newspapers.

Lesson 12 is all about finding and selecting online collections of newspapers that you can access, browse and search.

There are three types of online sites – free, subscription, and library/archive.  The first two are self explanatory.  The third requires that you have a library card at a library that has subscriptions available that they have paid for. Some offer remote access and others require that you physically be at the library or archive.


Free Online Sites

Once you have determined the type of site – how do you decide if the site might bear fruit for you?  Here are some criteria to use:

Select a site that has a collection for where your target search occurred. Then do your search. There are hundreds of county, state and province based collections that may provide with you with newspapers that are not in the big collections. If you don't know which newspapers are available for your desired location, you can always use this Library of Congress database for American newspapers. It also shows where offline newspapers might be located in archives, libraries and other institutions.

Check the dates of the newspapers that are available in their collection.  Don't bother searching if the location is right but the dates don't fit and vice versa.

There are specialty collections as well. For example African-American newspapers, Jewish newspapers, student newspapers, union newspapers, and even farming newspapers.

How to Choose a Subscription Site 

There are a few subscription historic newspaper sites, such as Newspapers.com, Newspaper Archive, Genealogy Bank and British News Archive.  How do you choose which ones to subscribe to?  A lot of articles can be found in free collections, but their content is different than what is available from the pay sites.  Here are a few criteria to consider:

Collections Available - just as in Real Estate where the motto is "Location, location, location" - the motto for subscription newspaper research sites is "Database, database, database." I get asked all the time if someone should purchase a subscription to site A.  I always ask them first - for the states, cities or areas that they are researching, as well as the dates that they are researching, does the site have a collection of newspapers available?  All sites have a list of what newspapers and dates are in their collections.  Check those out before you buy.

Price and Billing Practices - some of the aforementioned sites are 4 times as expensive as others. Some have a monthly plan, some only bill annually. Some auto-renew and some do not. If you purchase a subscription it is incumbent on you to read the terms of the subscription as well as the fine print. As always with any purchase online - it is buyer-be AWARE.

Scan and OCR Quality - the index that the site has created is only as good as the quality of the original scan and the OCR software that they use to build the index. Were the newspapers scanned from originals or from microfilm, or from copies of microfilm? Some of the collections that I have seen have an extremely poor quality image displayed after selecting a search result.  This indicates to me that the original image that they applied the OCR process to was degraded and hence the index certainly will suffer.  In other words - your ancestor is mentioned but the scan was so lousy that the OCR process could not build an acceptable index entry with the correct spelling of the name.

User Interface and Searching Features – sites have different user interfaces - some are simple and easy to use; some have richer capabilities and features. I always like to try the "Advanced Search" features because that generally indicates the total breadth of capability. And one must read the Help documentation for each of these sites. Generally they will explain which type of search criteria can be entered, for example Boolean and proximity searches. Quite honestly I have heard many subscribers complain about not finding anything when they haven't even tried to learn all the search capabilities available to them.

Subscription collections can be a gold mine and if you are strapped financially, many of them have a short term free trial or other methods to access their collections inexpensively.

Library Sites

This topic has already been covered in Lesson 10 - Newspapers at the Library.  I suggest that you refer to this lesson for much detail.

___________________________________

Please Share!


2 Comments
Charlie Miller
1/10/2016 12:48:54 pm

Reply
Rick Womack
9/26/2017 11:01:33 am

Don't expect the sites to have good technical expertise in assisting you beyond their published Help/FAQ section. I have communicated with staff of both subscription and fee sites about features and technical problems with unsatisfactory results.

Using newspaper sites is mostly a self-taught endeavor - I would encourage a beginner to find a mentor or go to a class or view a webinar on the subject to learn the tips to successful searching.
Having access to good image and PDF editing tools will help also.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Free Resource Links
    ​
    ​​

    By Location Newspapers Obituaries BMD Records Directories Photos Yearbooks Cemetery Records Divorce Records Naturalizations Mortuary Records Immigration Church Records School Records Voter Lists Coroners Records Probate and Wills Alumni Records

    Subscribe
    Option 1 - Receive Links to New Published Articles 4 X per month

    Enter Email

    Subscribe
    ​
    Option 2​ - Receive New Complete
    Bi-Monthly Newsletter​ 
    ​
    Enter Email

    Search This Site


    Need Help With Your Research?
    Picture
    Check out the 4,000 Pros at Trace.com


    Facebook Page
    Picture


    RSS Feed

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    November 2010
    October 2010

Picture
©2012-21

Thanks for Visiting The Ancestor Hunt
The Ancestor Hunt is focused on helping primarily hobbyist genealogy and family history researchers to achieve their goals.

"The Ancestor Hunt" is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program.  There may be a small commission paid to "The Ancestor Hunt" should you purchase from Amazon.
.
"The Ancestor Hunt" is also an affiliate for "A Life Untold", Trace.com, Whoowe, StorySpot, and "Audiobiography". There may be a small commission paid to "The Ancestor Hunt" should you purchase from these companies.