British Library Newspapers go Live with Brightsolid

[clematised]

http://www.brightsolid.com/home/late...goes-live.html


Read all about it here, a small fee for 48hours access for less than the price of a certificate


Edna

[Toots]

Here is the web address to search the newspapers

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

Really good found information on one ancestor between Boar War and WW1

[Uncle John]

It's a pity they haven't adopted the ScotlandsPeople pricing model of credits with a much longer lifespan. You'd need to be doing concentrated searching over a short period, rather than occasional dipping in and out.

[Anne in Carlisle]

Hmmm. Just searched for the same thing I was looking for on the Gale 19C collection. Found the same one reference but nothing else. A bit disappointing as I thought there would be more with a wider spread of newspapers. Obviously its not their fault if the matter wasn't ever printed but since the single reference is in a newspaper on the other side of England from the event I was surprised.

Anne

[Uncle John]

A lot of stuff was syndicated all over the place. When I had free access to Gale, I found references to a robbery at a jeweller's shop in papers all over the north of England.

[Cath RJ]

Ive been searching for years to find out how my great grandfather died in an accident at a raiway station. Today I've got it!! Only snag seems to be I can't work out how to print just the part of the page I need but that's probably just me.

[Christine in Herts]

Note that if your library has the BL C19 newspaper collection via Gale, you may already have access to some of the material.

Otherwise, it's promising to be a useful resource.

Christine

[clematised]

They were saying on tv this morning that it was going to be a 10 year ongoing project, someone on the bbc site was dissapointed at the quality of the articles they saw and said the images saved as PDF's are soft & blurred, zooming in causes pixalation.

I hope in time it will all be sorted out and we can find what we need easily and download it.

Edna

[Nickie]

Cath and anyone else struggling with capturing parts of articles:

This is what I use:

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

Nickie

[Nickie]

Thank you Edna !

Nickie

[Elaine ..Spain]

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.

[Cath RJ]

Thanks Nickie I'll give it a go but it all sounds very complicated to a computer dumbo like me.

Very easy, thanks Elaine. But as others have said this makes it even more difficult to read but it's helpful to know for future reference.

[TrevorFranklin]

Why do they make you use your credits an a short space of time?
Not fair for those of us who do not have the time to sit there all day :-(

As for the 'thumbnails' of text to give an overview of what it contains, it is rubbish!

Have a look at this
MR. PURSGLOVE let orris thanks for the long and fte.idy fupport he has receivtd from his Friends in the Horfe-de dmg BuiWfs ; and informs them he has given top thai bufmefs to Am

[Paulc]

totally amazing spent the last two days printing lots of stuff about various branches of my tree, some funny stories some sad stories and ALL of them a totally unknown discovery to me, what a find!! One made me laugh Samuel Chiddicks of South Ockendon was summoned by farmer Charles Sturgeon for throwing fireworks on the public highway it was November 5th after all!!!! Fined 1s.
Can't believe how many mentions my family get........

[polly88]

Hear Hear TrevorFranklin!! I emailed them yesterday complaining about just that point. Got a reply but not sure how helpful. This is what they said:

"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 ‘view all text and edit’ then ‘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."

What do you think? It seems a lot of hassle when you are paying such sums.

[TrevorFranklin]

I fully appreciate what they are saying about OCR, but to "view the image" requires paying for that and if the basic text is not making clear what you are going to look at, that's your money wasted.

My real moan is the time limitation on credits, it is just so unfair.
With all the marking etc i have to do, I cannot afford to spend a day or so looking and want to be able to dip in/out as and when I have the time

[Sylvia C]

I'm not concerned with the quality ......... there are two options for getting old records on to the internet. One is transcription by human, the other is scanning. And everyone knows that scanning print, especially newsprint, is an inexact science.

There apparently is a piece of software that you can install on your computer that will unscramble ......... but many sites ask for edit and save, eg the Australian newspapers www.trove.nla.au.

It's one way to help get information out there, isn't it.

and you have a third option ...... you can buy a 12 month subscription, which is what I'm thinking of doing. I can then search at my leisure ...... and possibly also help others.


Rather than complaining about it, and being moaning minnies, be glad that it has been done!

[polly88]

Well Sylvia, I am glad it's been done. But I think I/we have a right to say if we are unhappy with something. As has been said, you are basing your decision on paying for the image on pure unreadable hieroglyphics on occasion. It's all very well saying take out a subscription, I haven't got such deep pockets. I already pay FMP for a yearly subscription, and certificates at almost £10 a go, it's a very expensive hobby!! I know, I know - I have choices. Just saying! Oh, and also I do think it's right that you should have more time to spend your credits; why can't they let you do that? What can they lose?

[Christine in Herts]

I'm not concerned with the quality ......... there are two options for getting old records on to the internet. One is transcription by human, the other is scanning. And everyone knows that scanning print, especially newsprint, is an inexact science.

There apparently is a piece of software that you can install on your computer that will unscramble ......... but many sites ask for edit and save, eg the Australian newspapers www.trove.nla.au.

It's one way to help get information out there, isn't it.

and you have a third option ...... you can buy a 12 month subscription, which is what I'm thinking of doing. I can then search at my leisure ...... and possibly also help others.


Rather than complaining about it, and being moaning minnies, be glad that it has been done!

I'd agree with that, but with the reservation that the NLA Trove site is free. Brightsolid is entitled to recoup its costs, but should consider whether the quality justifies the pricing structure.

Christine

[Nelde]

I will have the time when I buy the two day credits but what i could not find is how many credits one lookup costs. Does anyone know? I am not that great at wandering around webpages.