This is part of a 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 2 is all about searching for online newspaper articles. This lesson will discuss the basics of searching. About a dozen future lessons will focus on specific techniques to make your searching experience even better and more successful.
Almost all online historic newspaper collections have one thing in common - they have a basic search capability and an advanced search feature. I tell everyone who will listen - almost always use the advanced feature since it provides so many different ways to hone in on the articles that you seek.
Basic Search
Basic searches lure you into entering a surname or full name and hoping for the best, but that's OK. Let's look at a few online collections and their basic search capability:
Lesson 2 is all about searching for online newspaper articles. This lesson will discuss the basics of searching. About a dozen future lessons will focus on specific techniques to make your searching experience even better and more successful.
Almost all online historic newspaper collections have one thing in common - they have a basic search capability and an advanced search feature. I tell everyone who will listen - almost always use the advanced feature since it provides so many different ways to hone in on the articles that you seek.
Basic Search
Basic searches lure you into entering a surname or full name and hoping for the best, but that's OK. Let's look at a few online collections and their basic search capability:
This state site for Arizona just allows you to enter one text search term
This state site for Oklahoma just allows you to enter one text search term
Chronicling America allows a search term, a date range and to select a state.
Don't get me wrong - these basic searches are not bad. But if you wish to narrow down your search results, you should try Advanced Search (examples below). And many sites do not have an advanced search feature so you will have just the basic search, which is far better than nothing, of course.
Advanced Search
Advanced Searches have a variety of added ways to narrow your search results. Take a look at the same sites' Advanced Search capabilities:
Advanced Search
Advanced Searches have a variety of added ways to narrow your search results. Take a look at the same sites' Advanced Search capabilities:
Look at these added features - date range, Boolean operations, exact phrases, as well as selected collections, language and type
Features include Boolean operations and date range
Advanced features include selecting location and newspaper, date range; specific pages as well as language, booleans, exact phrases and proximity searching.
Here is a list of some features from several sites that offer Advanced Searches:
The moral of this story is to use the Advanced Search feature if available. This is especially true if your target person has a common name. A simple message for sure, but if heeded will provide you with more successful search results.
- Select exact newspaper
- Specify newspaper
- Date ranges
- Boolean operations (AND, OR, NOT)
- Language
- Sub-collection
- Ethnicity
- Proximity
- Fuzzy and phonic searching
- Related words and synonyms
The moral of this story is to use the Advanced Search feature if available. This is especially true if your target person has a common name. A simple message for sure, but if heeded will provide you with more successful search results.
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