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British Library Newspapers go on line today

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by clematised (U3233879) on Tuesday, 29th November 2011

  Brightsolid have digitised the Newspapers held by the British Library and can be read on line for less than the price of a certificate for 48 hours and it may enhance your Family Tree Information.
  
  
  
  Edna

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by urhistory (U2675057) on Tuesday, 29th November 2011

  I've found the quality of saved pages very disappointing, particularly classified ad pages.
  
  Viewing a page online is fine and it's possible to zoom in on an article and it is sharp and readable but the PDF files are poor, some are almost unreadable.
  
  Images saved as PDF's are soft & blurred, zooming in causes pixalation.
  
  Also if it's a page of ads finding what's been flagged up in search can be difficult to locate on the page.
  
  If there was someway to save the online image, it would great.

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• Message 3

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  Posted by clematised (U3233879) on Tuesday, 29th November 2011

  
  
  Here is the link to the site
  
  Edna

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• Message 4

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Tuesday, 29th November 2011

  Edna,
  
  Thanks for this. It is disappointing that there are no 20th century newspapers, so if you are looking for Titanic then it won't be there and the transcription is pretty awful, I can't believe the actual images are the same.

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• Message 5

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  Posted by clematised (U3233879) on Tuesday, 29th November 2011

  The site is going to be an ongoing work for the next ten years according to the news this morning.
  
  Anyone know how to get the info from the page to the printer, tried and tested of course.
  
  Edna

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• Message 6

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by clematised (U3233879) on Tuesday, 29th November 2011

  The site is going to be an ongoing work for the next ten years according to the news this morning.
  
  Anyone know how to get the info from the page to the printer, tried and tested of course.
  
  ·‘»ε²Τ²ΉΜύ To answer my own question here it is
  
  Edna
  
  ALT+Print Screen button (captures whole of current screen)
  Open PAINT
  CTRL+V to PASTE
  Click on Select button (rectangle) to drag over bit you want
  File - NEW - No to save current screen
  CTRL+V to PASTE
  Save image as JPEG
  
  
  If you are using Vista or Windows 7 and want to do a screen capture then a quick way of doing so is by using the SNIPPING TOOL.
  
  Go to START -> ALL PROGRAMS -> ACCESSORIES -> SNIPPING TOOL
  Position cursor and drag across screen to capture the area required and then -> FILE - SAVE AS
  
  You can then open the file in whichever image handling program you prefer.

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• Message 7

  , in reply to message 6.

  Posted by writerlucy24 (U13905009) on Wednesday, 30th November 2011

  I agree with all of the comments above. The image quality is poor but also remember that the quality of the original documents is not great either. The coverage of the country is not good but I am lucky in that I have significant interests in some of the places covered.
  
  My main reason for posting though was to say that a search of the archive added to my knowledge in the case of one person but in the case of another has got me past one of my current "brick walls". .............. and that was an entry in the classifieds in one paper in 1849!

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• Message 8

  , in reply to message 7.

  Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Wednesday, 30th November 2011

  Some of the articles are interesting as one of my ancestors had to attend sick animals as he was a veterinary surgeon and apparently pioneered a new procedure. My research did also go back one stage slightly of another ancestor who died of shock from a railway accident and the articles show what happened at the time, so it is useful.
  
  Iunderstand that the index is generated from an optical scanning system so that might limit research but we will see!.

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• Message 9

  , in reply to message 8.

  Posted by clematised (U3233879) on Thursday, 1st December 2011

  Here is advice on helping get a clearer view, I hope it helps if you have a problem viewing it
  
  Edna
  
  
  "Optical character recognition (OCR) text is the text that OCR software has translated from the original newspaper page to online format.
  It is electronically scanned in and has not been manually reviewed or corrected.
  OCR makes it possible to search large quantities of full text information but it is not 100% accurate unfortunately.
  The accuracy depends on a variety of factors: condition of the original newspaper or microfilm, quality of the paper, size and style of the font and column layouts, for example.
  
  I do hope this has explained why when you search you may receive results such as this. When you view the image however you will be able to view the text and correct the OCR if you wish by clicking β€˜view all text and edit’ then β€˜fix text’ to make the necessary corrections.
  Press 'save' when you have finished making your changes or 'cancel' to exit without saving your changes.
  You can correct individual letters, words and lines of text."
  
  

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• Message 10

  , in reply to message 9.

  Posted by urhistory (U2675057) on Thursday, 1st December 2011

  I have used other digitised newspaper sites and the PDF files have been much easier to read.
  
  The conversion from the image to PDF needs to be tweaked, where possible I'm using the snipping tool to save from the image.
  
  Some of the pages have been captured in such a way as to make them unreadable, no wonder the OCR produces gobble-de-gook.
  
  Many papers I was looking at have Deaths, Marriages & Births on the left of the front page, but time again they were 'bleached out' and impossible to read.
  
  Yesterday I was using a free Dutch newspaper website and the scans are far much better and the text can be searched within the PDF file.
  
  I'd rather they took time to produce the best quality rather than rush to get the job done.
  
  I should point out I've compared the online versions with the original papers seen at Colindale.

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