Using digitized historical newspapers for genealogical research Brian Geiger, California Digital Newspaper Collection Frederick Zarndt, IFLA Governing Board 1. Introductory remarks: Who we are; focus on freely available collections and especially those that allow researchers to create accounts; numerous sites they can pay to access but we won’t spend much time on them 2. Only small percentage of surviving newspapers have been digitized 3. How newspapers are digitized. Focusing especially on OCR, if it’s not OCR’ed well it’s not discoverable 4. How Coronado newspapers were digitized.  CDNC’s work with the public library, Coronado Public Library’s work with the publisher, the process of scanning the film and processing the images, etc. 5. Free vs. Pay. 2 kinds of digitized newspaper archives: 1) publicly funded and available for free, 2) commercial sites you pay to access. Dozens or even hundreds of public sites, from small institutional to national. 6. Google won’t always get you what you want 7. Basic search using Elephind: What elephind is. Search “Abraham Lincoln” and explain what they see. Described “facets” 8. CDNC advanced search 9. Collecting What You Find: Right-click features in the CDNC 10. Collecting What You Find: CDNC user accounts 11. Interacting with Content: CDNC 12. Interacting with Content: Tagging and commenting in CDNC

1. Finding and Using Digitized
Historical Newspapers for Your
Research
Brian Geiger, Director
California Digital Newspaper Collection
bgeiger@ucr.edu
Frederick Zarndt
IFLA Governing Board
frederick@frederickzarndt.com

2. Please open your computer browser and go to
these URLs, each in a separate tab or window
•http://news.google.com/newspapers
•https://goo.gl/nSkOKC
•http://cdnc.ucr.edu
•http://www.elephind.com

3. What we will do …
• A few words of introduction
• Not all newspapers are digitized[Brian]
• How newspapers are digitized [Frederick]
• Free vs. Subscription: focusing on free[Brian]
• Google won’t always get you what you want [Frederick]
•Search basics and more [Frederick]
• Creating an account at a free, public collection [Brian]
• Using free, public digital newspaper collections
• Basic search (with facets) using Elephind [Brian]
• Advanced search using California Digital Newspaper
Collection [Frederick]
• Collecting what you find [Brian]
• Interacting with digital newspapers [Frederick]
• Miscellaneous [Frederick]
• Question and answer

4. Please take the digital
newspapers experience survey!
[https://goo.gl/forms/W6rZ7POYAIlKrTkH2]

5. NotAllNewspapersareDigitized

6. HowNewspapersareDigitized
1st, take a picture of
the newspaper …

7. 2nd, analyze the image ….
HowNewspapersareDigitized

8. Deaths. lln»rieff, Esq. of <c .. Qn.
Sunday, the till. greatly Drandrellt, of
Orms4irJi.- ~ ; ;✓ ' • * On ijfr r inn ljjjil F
iij '11 f Havodivyd, Carnarvonshire, S ;
**" *- ' « ' March Oxford, F. Tfovmeud,
Uerald. » • V . •On Tncsdav last, Mr.
Charles. IWilinson, this 8 ; had vf
thesis#,, a week ago, which
tcrminate<i'iu his death. . / ' ■ O'i
Sunday, dJst nit. at. AsbtCnvHall, mar
Lancaster, Mr.,Geo. Worn ick, many
years house'steward hit late Once The
Hamilton and Brandon. He locked
himself h»oWn'r«wte<: soon. twelve
o'clock" that dny, and fii»-d a loaded
pistol "through Ins bead, 1 which
instantaneously killed him. Coronet's
Verdict, shot himself in a temporary fit
of Friday week,
3rd, optical character recognition …
HowNewspapersareDigitized

9. 4th, format the image and data appropriately …
HowNewspapersareDigitized

10. FreevsSubscription

11. National Collections with Free Access
• USA http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
• Europe http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/
• Europe http://www.europeana-newspapers.eu/
• Australia http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper
• New Zealand http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/
• Norway http://www.nb.no/Tilbud/Samlingen/Samlingen/Aviser
• Singapore http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/
• Netherlands http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/
• Estonia https://dea.digar.ee
• Many others
FreevsSubscription

12. State Collections with Free Access
• California http://cdnc.ucr.edu
• Illinois http://idnc.library.illinois.edu
• Indiana https://newspapers.library.in.gov
• Kentucky http://kdl.kyvl.org/?f[format][]=newspapers
• Minnesota http://www.mnhs.org/newspapers
• Ohio http://www.ohiohistoryhost.org/ohiomemory/newspapers
• Oregon http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/
• Texas http://texashistory.unt.edu/
• Utah http://digitalnewspapers.org/
• Virginia http://virginiachronicle.com/
• Washington https://goo.gl/6FpqCk
• Wyoming http://newspapers.wyo.gov/
• And others …
FreevsSubscription

13. Subscription Collections
Institutional Subscriptions
n Proquest Historical Newspapers http://www.proquest.com/products-
services/pq-hist-news.html
n Readex (Newsbank) Historical Newspapers
http://www.readex.com/?content=343
Individual Subscriptions
n Newspapers.com (Ancestry) http://www.newspapers.com/
n NewspaperArchive http://newspaperarchive.com/
n British Newspaper Archive http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
FreevsSubscription

14. FreevsSubscription

15. won’t always get
you want you want

16. Frederick Zarndt, Apr 2012 IFLA International Newspapers
Conference, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris.
http://bit.ly/bnfnewspapers
traffic rankings and search
results show that content in
library digital newspaper
collections dwells in Internet
obscurity

17. how do we
know this?

18. Gallipoli Campaign
April 1915 to January 1916
also known as
Battle of Gallipoli
Dardanelles Campaign
Battle of Çanakkale

19. search phrase
(battle OR campaign)
AND
(Gallipoli OR Dardenelles OR Çanakkale)
date range 1-Jan-1915 to 31-Dec-1916
(modified as needed for local search engines)

20. using this search phrase
we first search the
collection with the library’s
own search engine...

21. collection collection URL ~size pages number of results
Trove http://trove.nla.gov.au 9,880,000 16,321 articles
CDNC http://cdnc.ucr.edu 1,686,3710 3 articles
Historical Newspaper Library http://www.nationallibrary.fi/ 2,000,000 333 results
Gallica http://gallica.bnf.fr 2,200,000 222 results
Historische Kranten http://kranten.kb.nl 11,000,000 34,399 articles
Papers Past http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz 2,960,000 7,084 articles
NBDigital Aviser https://goo.gl/k3P2f5 12,000,000 539 articles
Newspaper SG http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers 2,400,000 294 articles
British Newspaper Archive http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ 15,780,000 1857 articles
Chronicling America http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov 11,310,000 104,503 hits
search results

22. now we search with
the same phrase
using Google...

23. http://www.google.com/
http://www.google.co.uk/
http://www.google.com.au/
http://www.google.co.nz/
http://www.google.com.sg/
(battle OR campaign)
AND
(Gallipoli OR Dardenelles OR
Çanakkale)
search phrase

24. #43

25. #44

26. #96

27. IN 1st 100 GOOGLE SEARCH
RESULTS, NOT A SINGLE RESULT
FROM LIBRARY HISTORICAL
DIGITAL NEWSPAPER
COLLECTIONS!

28. Search basics
Searchbasics

29. Searchbasics
Search basics
[http://news.google.com/newspapers]
n Search for an exact phrase using “ or ‘, for example, “coronado library” or
‘a penny saved is a penny earned’
n Search for alternate words or phrases using OR, for example, (bill OR
william) AND gates
n Search for a phrase with missing words, for example, ‘a penny * is a
penny *’
n Search for synonyms using ~, for example, ~grandmother moses or
~william clinton
n Form complex searches by grouping words and operators, for example,
(marilyn monroe) OR (norma jeanne mortenson) which is the same as
(marilyn AND monroe) OR (norma AND jeanne AND mortenson)

30. CreatinganAccount

31. CreatinganAccount

32. CreatinganAccount
Guidelines:
§ Capitalization matters; keep it simple and use all lowercase
§ No spaces
§ Use a password you will remember; it does not have to be
super secure

33. Guidelines:
§ Confirmation email is sent to account you registered; make
sure to check that account
§ Email should show up in minutes, no more than an hour
§ Check Junk or Spam folder if the email is not in Inbox
§ Click on the link in email to confirm registration; if you don’t
confirm, you won’t be able to log in
§ Contact site administrator with any problems
CreatinganAccount

34. Elephind
[http://www.elephind.com]

35. Basic Search (in
Elephind)
Faceted Browsing
§ Place of Publication
§ Date
§ Source Collection
§ Newspaper Title
§ Language
Other Types of Facets
§ “Article” Type
§ Tags
§ Word Count

36. Basic Search (in
Elephind)
Facet: State of Publication
1. Clicked on facet “United States”.
2. Then clicked on “More…” within “State
of Publication”.
3. List of indexed articles by state
collection.

37. Basic Search (in
Elephind)
Facet: Arizona
1. Showing all 1,885 articles from
Arizona
2. Can further refine by clicking on
another facet
3. Can refine by multiple facets

40. Advanced search
[http://cdnc.ucr.edu]

41. Collecting What You
Find
Indiana’s Hoosier State Chronicles
[http://newspapers.library.in.gov]

42. Collecting What You
Find

43. Collecting What You
Find

44. Collecting What You
Find
Private Lists

45. Correcting OCR text
[http://goo.gl/KN3LOQ]

46. Deaths. lln»rieff, Esq. of <c .. Qn.
Sunday, the till. greatly Drandrellt, of
Orms4irJi.- ~ ; ;✓ ' • * On ijfr r inn ljjjil F
iij '11 f Havodivyd, Carnarvonshire, S ;
**" *- ' « ' March Oxford, F. Tfovmeud,
Uerald. » • V . •On Tncsdav last, Mr.
Charles. IWilinson, this 8 ; had vf
thesis#,, a week ago, which
tcrminate<i'iu his death. . / ' ■ O'i
Sunday, dJst nit. at. AsbtCnvHall, mar
Lancaster, Mr.,Geo. Worn ick, many
years house'steward hit late Once The
Hamilton and Brandon. He locked
himself h»oWn'r«wte<: soon. twelve
o'clock" that dny, and fii»-d a loaded
pistol "through Ins bead, 1 which
instantaneously killed him. Coronet's
Verdict, shot himself in a temporary fit
of Friday week,
Raw OCR text Article image

50. Commenting on articles / pages
[http://goo.gl/KN3LOQ]

51. Adding a tag to articles / pages
[http://goo.gl/KN3LOQ]

52. Important Wikipedia webpage!
nWikipedia https://goo.gl/nSkOKC

54. More about search
n http://websearch.about.com/od/searchingtheweb
n http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/search-
engine.htm
n https://support.google.com/websearch
n https://duck.co/help/results/syntax
n https://help.yahoo.com/kb/search
n http://www.solrtutorial.com/solr-query-syntax.html

55. Miscellaneous digital
newspapers info
• Elephind https://www.elephind.com/
• Center for Research Libraries http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.php
• Google News http://news.google.com/newspapers/
• Stars and Stripes https://goo.gl/okF5Dg

56. Please take the workshop
satisfaction survey!
[https://goo.gl/forms/h5d8R51GtgNksONz2]

57. Questions?
Slides are available at
http://www.slideshare.net/cowboyMontana
Brian Geiger
California Digital Newspaper
Collection
University of California Riverside
bgeiger@ucr.edu
Frederick Zarndt
IFLA Governing Board
International Federation of Libraries
and Associations (IFLA)
frederick@frederickzarndt.com