Landships II

There are problems, I find:

1. Early days yet - a lot of online newspaper archives in Britain still omit 1914-19. The older British Library Newspaper archive for the 19th century is far more complete than the new one about which there has been a lot of fuss. But it ends in 1900 (and the new one seems to end in 1903 anyway, so far, while the Highlands Council Library service also omits the Great War years). This will change however with time.

2. No doubt because of the London Government's obsession with charging for every public service, and because a few are in any case provided by the original newspaper, most or all are paying or subscription - unlike the very praiseworthy Aussie jobs mentioned here, which I have used for my quite separate academic research - bonzer chaps indeed. However, do check out the options in a major city reference library - they often have access via their desks or even their own website. (People with university library access have a big advantage here.) For instance, the Times has a more or less complete run, as does the Scotsman - both covering the GW years and available for pay through themselves but also free through some libraries. For instance, those who can register with the National Library of Scotland can get access to the Scotsman website through the NLS website www.nls.uk . Very, very useful.

3. Reliabillity of search. Watch the search engines. Firstly, some default to Keyword - which is selected by the editors - when a free text search would usually be more useful. Second, the automated optical software that compiles th eindices often doesn't work very well especially if the scan is rough. Be prepared to use multiple angles of attack and various keywords and combinations - and in extremis to read through the whole paper if something ought to be happening on date x but you can't find it on automatic search. Third, searching  for 'tank' for instance is a pain on its own - too many locomotives, bulk carrier ships, motor cars, sewage plants, weddings of Tank Corps chaps, etc. etc. - but using the wrong keyword will lose what you are looking for. And bear in mind that if you re paying by the article it will get very expensive very soon.

But it beats travelling to libraries to mess around with microfilm - and it helps solve the old problem of needing to know when and where something happened to find out about it at all.

 

 

National Library of Singapore has good and free archive too. I have noticed that Singapore newspapers have published often absolutely same news as British newspapers.

http://newspapers.nl.sg/

 

Thanks again Mike.

Not a newspaper but certainly a publication and one already well known to some forumites here is the London Gazette search. May as well note it as well, to keep the on-line references in one place:

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/search

Superb reference, but with its very own set of OCR idiosycrasies (thinking of the pages where "small caps" as used in some surnames, etc. are not rendered in readable text at all though they are fine in other pages).  For all that, the Australian gazette (Commonwealth, haven't checked the various States) doesn't even come close, will leave that aside at this time).

Some members have found the AWM photographic collection and the honours and awards search useful.  Even further removed from the topic (on-line at least) but research often dives into such rabbit burrows:

http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/photographs/

http://www.awm.gov.au/research/people/honours_and_awards/

Steve

An update - I have now heard back from a librarian at my university library.

It appears that the new Brightsolid/British Library initiative mentioned above

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

is seemingly for personal/individual subs only - institutional access is still not available (as far as the librarian could ascertain) and there is nothing yet about any proposals for this. I find this astonishing, nay astounding, given that the BL is involved ...

Anyway, what this means is that there is no access through your national, university or local council library, on site or online via their website. This is a big disappointment especially as it includes the scans from the earlier batches of digitised newspapers that were done with public money in the form of research council grants. This latter original and separate BL database "British Newspapers 1700-1900" database will NOT be extended even when they scan new newspapers/years for the new commercial setup. THis is a big shame as it will automatically miss out 1914-18.

I'll let you know if the situation changes (as should anyone else who hears news). Meanwhile, yet another way to spend the bawbees.

I'm trying out britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (commercial partner = Brightsolid) with decidedly mixed results.

I have suddenly realised that it seemingly reuses Brightsolid's interface for the National Archives of Scotland for Scottish statutory personal data - birth, marriage, death, census etc. as on scotlandspeople.gov.uk. Now this last works pretty well (and I prefer it to the English equivalent on ancestry.co.uk in many ways). But it doesn't translate so well over to newspapers which have longer text than the average census entry, if you aren't simply looking for your ancestor's wedding notice.

I also find the output in terms of imagery very poor for newspapers. Has anyone, please, managed to work out how to print out/save an article alone as an image without having to (a) machine-convert to plaintext, which I don't want to do because of the error risk or (b) convert to PDF, which means further work and cost in terms of Adobe software to convert to a normal image that I can edit and crop down?

Unless I am missing something, my overall assessment would be that it has some newspapers and/or dates not available on the original BL British Newspapers 1700-1900 (commercial partner = Gale) setup. (But the latter has a lot not available on the new site, and/or its search function is so rough that I'm not getting a lot that comes over onto the original BL database - not sure which.)

So to be fair the new site has already proved well worth the £6.95 for a trial 2 day period as it coughed up some letters to the editor I needed for the 'day job' research (1840s history) - compare the time and trouble and cost to travel to a library with microfilms of Dorset newspapers. But - again unless I am missing something - I would always use the original BL database first and use the new one for items not on the original database. However, as this older database does not extend beyond 1900 it may not be much use to many of us in this field!

Thanks Ironsides - very useful to know about for other purposes.

However the problem here is that the site will seemingly only produce a pdf - you don't get the option to divert it to say a jpg or image. So I'm still stuck with cutting out bits of pdfs using the Adobe "save bit in blue rectangle" function and pasting them into Word documents ... could be worse I suppose!

Excellent Mike, thanks for persevering with that, improvements may follow.

I may have mentioned it before but I use the (free) German IrfanView graphics utility which handles PDF and converts to/between graphics formats (it even has OCR but I haven't had a lot of luck with that, though, being German, it supposedly handles Fraktur). Anyway, it is (almost) infinitely "extensible" through various "add-ons" and even combines separate PDF pages into a single document, just like a "bought one", when the appropriate GhostScript utility is present (separate but also free). If you've ever downloaded an archived article from Flight Magazine ... IrfanView is/can be quite complex but it is a comprehensive tool and there is a users' forum out there somewhere (which is where I got the information to find and install and configure GhostScript).

Actually, the "best" OCR I have that doesn't involve additional cost is the one which comes with my multi-function printer's scanning software - whenever I can remember how to point it at an image file that isn't being created by scan. I'm supposing most/all "multi-function" printers have the same (or are even easier to bend to one's will). But it doesn't handle the Fraktur. And I've forgotten again. Hopefully I've kept a note somewhere ... just have to find it.

Hopefully you won't need it Mike - but worth remembering just in case.  Oh I should mention IrfanView appears to be Austrian, not German .