Tag: Newspapers

Toolkit: Local newspapers

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The local newspaper is one of the most useful resources for the capture and later research into the history of a locality. Almost every sizeable town in Britain has (or has had) a local paper, but regrettably the number of printed titles has dwindled in recent years. Some are now only available online.

Many local papers began publication in the mid -19th century at a time when print media was the way that most people received their news. In many instances, the newspaper will be the only place where information on a specific matter has been recorded.

Whilst each paper has its own character, they all contain the same elements; notices, articles and features:

  • National and international news in brief
  • Regional and local news
  • Local government and politics
  • Business
  • Education
  • Social welfare
  • Churches and clubs
  • Crime and court proceedings
  • Obituaries
  • Local events
  • Sport
  • Letters
  • Advertisements
  • Vacancies and jobs

In the early twentieth century the inclusion of photographs became more widespread, however many titles such as the Illustrated London News had already been using images to enhance features for several decades.

Indexing & newspaper cuttings

Local studies libraries have traditionally created indexes of articles to facilitate the use of newspapers and to increase their usefulness. These are invaluable resources, often giving valuable leads to complex enquiries. Such hard-copy general and obituary indexes to newspapers as well as cuttings should always be maintained. Adding to these indexes is time-consuming but is to be encouraged where staffing permits.

But be warned: other local government officers often do not understand what we are doing and why. In the wake of GDPR legislation some administrators have become over-anxious about online indexes. At the time of writing the online index to newspaper articles compiled by Medway Archives Centre has been removed by order of Medway Council’s GDPR compliance team.

Some authorities have made their newspaper indexes available online:

Preservation and availability to the user

Newspapers were not printed to last, rather to be read at the time of production. Newsprint paper is often of poor quality, highly acidic and likely to become brittle with handling; so some method of producing surrogates should be used. Surrogates are then made available for public consultation. It is recommended that newspapers should be repaired by professional conservators as often the pages will need to be fully covered by a thin layer of Japanese paper, though small repairs can be done in-house.

Microfilming has until recently been the preferred method of copying as it is a well-established and long-lasting solution. A number of suppliers will produce a master negative and a copy positive. The positive is used by libraries and a new copy is produced from the negative when required. The negative can be stored at another location for increased security.

Digitisation offers an excellent alternative. An advantage of the digital option is that it can include OCR (Optical character recognition). This form of indexing/searching is especially useful, but will of course increase the cost of the surrogate copy. However, OCR can be rather hit and miss for older typefaces, as software finds older typefaces hard to read. Some local newspapers may also supply you with electronic versions of their older newspapers, saving you the time, money and effort digitising paper versions.

Some recent editions of local newspapers are also available via newspaper e-resources. See below for more information. For more information on the discussion on whether to microfilm or scan, read this blog post. Whichever method is used the library needs to have suitable equipment for reading and printing copies for users.  

Wherever possible original copies of newspapers should be retained, both as a security measure and to enable images and high-quality text to be reproduced.

Traditionally newspapers have been bound to aid use, but they can also be kept flat in acid-free buffered boxboard boxes.

British Newspaper Archive & other online services

The British Library, until November 2013, offered access to nationwide newspapers at its Colindale site, but this option no longer exists. Original newspapers were moved to a purpose-built storage facility at Boston Spa and free access to papers, both microfilm or original hard copy, is available at the British Library’s St. Pancras site. For more information, read the British Library Newspaper Guide.

The BL has entered into a partnership with the subscription site FindmyPast which hosts the British Newspaper Archive, giving online access to newspapers and journals. The number of available titles is growing all the time, currently boasting over 37 million pages online dating from the 1700s to the present.

It would be fair to say however that coverage of the UK is somewhat patchy; some areas are much better served than others, and for the titles included there may be only a few editions. More recent decades are also less well represented due to copyright issues, with the bulk of their online collections having been published over a hundred years ago.

To view available titles go to https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/home/NewspaperTitles

Many libraries already have access to FindmyPast. For further information on usage in libraries and education go to https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/content/libraries_education

Libraries can also subscribe to local newspaper content, both recent and more historic, via a number of other products:

Other websites offering access to local papers:

  • Chronicling America – Historic American newspapers from 1836-1922, sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress (free)
  • Gale News Vault – A broad selection of international newspapers and periodicals (paywall)
  • Google News Archive – Google’s discontinued newspaper scanning project, whose content is still available to search (free)
  • Ireland Old News – Transcriptions of old Irish news articles (free)
  • Newspapers.com – Database of 3,400 newspapers, mainly American (paywall)
  • Trove – The National Library of Australia’s digitised newspaper collection (free)
  • UKpressonline (paywall)
  • Welsh Newspapers Online – Welsh and English-language newspapers from 1804-1919, digitised by the National Library of Wales (free).

Further reading:

Richard Abbott ‘What Goes Around Comes Around: News from Birmingham to Australia and Back Again’. Local Studies Librarian, Vol. 31, 2012, p, 2-4 – Account of using digitised newspapers to find out about a Birmingham surveyorDownload

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To microfilm, or not microfilm, that is the question

tonypilmer2 Comments

When the British Library closed its newspaper microfilming unit I huffed and I puffed whilst collecting together copies of all of our local newspapers. The puffing continued until I had sent them off to be microfilmed. I must admit that I was a bit happier when I discovered how much money we were saving!

sl-ol-slough_observer17061899083901-e-00-000
Image courtesy of http://www.SloughHistoryOnline.org.uk

 

5 or so year later things have moved on……

Access to old newspapers has got much easier as there is more and more material on some newspaper websites, including an ability to buy old photos from newspapers (including an embarrassing supply of photos of local studies librarians carrying our events in years gone by!) Our local newspaper sells its content to Newsbank so my local library gives access to post-2007 local newspaper via that platform.

The problem is that local studies guys should also ensure that these newspapers are available for researchers in hundreds of years, so microfilming still provides both access and preservation. However……

Costs of microfilming have gone up and library budgets have gone down…. plus the number of local studies guys to organise it has also gone down too.

Local newspapers have been hit by cuts as much as libraries. Newsrooms have shrunk, titles have dwindled and my local 50p per week newspaper is now delivered free and looks very similar to our old free newspapers. Though, I must say, that is not universally so.

It is still a right faff to ensure that every year you collect a complete set of newspapers with all the appropriate alternative editions, though, if you can persuade your local newspaper to give you pdfs of their old newspapers it should be, in theory, relatively easy to get microfilmed.

The new generation of microfilm readers/scanners which link into computers are really good and the quality of microfilming has come on leaps and bounds.

After all, do we need to worry about conservation and access? Are we in a position to rely on the BL to permanently conserve all of the key papers in our collection area and then make them available via one of their strategic partnerships?

So what are you doing and what do you think? I’m sure that local studies collections across the country would love to know the “right answer”. Please share your thoughts by putting a comment below and please help us to find out what is happening on the ground by filling in this three question survey. All contributions will be treated anonymously.

Newspapers as an Historical Resource – LSG event overview

Robert Jones1 Comment

A few weeks ago I attended a half-day event at CILIP HQ on the use of newspapers for historical research. The event, organised by CILIP Local Studies Group, featured two very interesting talks by Edmund King, former head of the British Library‘s newspaper library, plus a personal account by Diana Dixon of the way local newspapers have enabled her to piece together previously untold stories from her family history.

Most of the day focused specifically on digitised newspaper databases, and in particular the British Newspaper Archive which Edmund King oversaw the creation of at the British Library. Like Diana Dixon I had used the BNA for my own family history research and at the local studies library where I work, but had not previously appreciated the full range of international newspaper databases which can now be searched online. Some of these databases mentioned by Edmund King in the first of his talks included:

  • Chronicling America – Historic American newspapers from 1836-1922, sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress (free)
  • Gale News Vault – A broad selection of international newspapers and periodicals (paywall)
  • Google News Archive – Google’s discontinued newspaper scanning project, whose content is still available to search (free)
  • Ireland Old News – Transcriptions of old Irish news articles (free)
  • Newspapers.com – Database of 3,400 newspapers, mainly American (paywall)
  • Trove – The National Library of Australia’s digitised newspaper collection (free)
  • Welsh Newspapers Online – Welsh and English-language newspapers from 1804-1919, digitised by the National Library of Wales (free)

Several of the above can be cross-searched via Elephind.com, which is attempting to create a single-search interface for all the world’s online historic newspapers (they have quite a long way to go admittedly, but a noble aim nonetheless). As local studies specialists we might question how useful international databases like these are to our daily work, which tends on the whole to focus on local people and events. The truth of course is that historically these ‘local people’ often moved around considerably, especially within the Empire, and events on one side of the world would often be reported on the other due to the complex web of family and business connections which linked people across the globe. Indeed, comparing the regional and international reportage of local events can often provide unique insights into these events which local sources alone could not.

Next Diana Dixon provided a very useful overview of some of the ways local newspapers can be used by family historians. In the past I had used reports of local births, marriages and deaths as an alternative to ordering GRO certificates, but had not thought to examine the long lists of wedding guests and mourners frequently included in these same reports to put together a detailed picture of an individual’s extended family and social circle.

After tea and coffee Edmund King’s second talk focused on some of the more unusual items which can be found in the British Newspaper Archive. We would naturally expect to find reports of local events, births, marriages and deaths etc., but many of the ‘lighter’ pieces can be equally revealing. These include poetry, cartoons, celebrity portraits, ladies’ fashions, maps, literary reviews, serialised novels and items of musical interest, which can all help flesh out the world in which our ancestors lived.

All of the above were all illustrated with examples, and one of the best in my opinion was a brief mention in the Oxford Journal on the 23rd of February 1765 of a visit by:

“One Wolfgang Mozart, a German boy of about eight years old…who can play upon various Sorts of Instruments of Music, in Concert, or Solo, and can compose Music surprizingly ; so that he may be reckoned a Wonder at his Age” (p. 3, col. 1).

It is inconceivable to think this wonderful description would have been found without the BNA’s search engine, and it is worth remembering how lucky we are to have such an excellent tool at our disposal.

It was a very interesting and informative day, and a great opportunity to meet with colleagues and share experiences. If there are any historical newspapers in your library’s collections which you would like to see digitised, you can submit a request on the BNA forum.

Robert Jones, Assistant Librarian (Local Studies)
London Borough of Hillingdon
rjones1@hillingdon.gov.uk