Using Historical Newspapers : Historical Newspaper Databases

Before you dive into Burney Newspapers Collection for your primary sources, be forewarned: This is a particularly difficult database to use. Ashley Marshall and Robert D. Hume, both professors of English literature, observed that “[m]any of our friends and colleagues have found the site bafflingly opaque, cranky, and nonintuitive” (p.24). Their experience is summarized below. You can also find their experience using the Burney Newspapers Collection by following this link:

Why Use the Burney Newspapers Collection

• Socio-economic History
  • Consumer prices in the Burney Newspapers Collection are a rich primary source for British socio-economic history. Pay attention to the prices listed for books and other commodities, and consult other sources regarding income and socio-economic history. 

• Art and culture in 17th & 18th Century
  • Get an idea of how a particular literary work was perceived during the 1600s and 1700s.
  • Find out how much a particular publication cost at the time, and why it was or was not received well (perhaps too expensive for an average income earner).
  • Research which plays were in local theatres at a given time, and how they were received by both the public and reviewers.

• Slice of Life 
  • The collection provides insight into different aspects of life during the period in question. For example, you may find information on the history of British medicine, with reports on smallpox, bloodletting, etc.     

Format

• The format of newspapers from this time is different from modern papers, which have banner headlines, decks and sections including domestic, international, special features, editorial and advertising. 

• These older newspapers are usually divided into sections called Foreign, London and Others, with advertisements weaving in and out of paragraphs. 

• Headlines were not customary in the 17th & 18th Century. 

• Stories were known as paragraphs, and were not prefaced by a headline. Without headlines, readers typically did not know what news content came their way until they were already reading the paragraphs. 

• Sources of news were rarely stated. Wire services and news agencies did not exist. 

  • As a result, content was often copied from paper to paper, and the authors of stories were often unverifiable.

  • Content was often hearsay.

Bias

• Some papers were published purely to promote a specific agenda, maybe in protest to a contemporary event. These papers/periodicals were often short-lived in nature. 
  • For example, Mercurius Pragmaticus was a Royalist periodical, published to ridicule Parliament and Oliver Cromwell. Please see:

• Researching an individual newspaper/periodical’s bias is a must. You can do this by using the “Find It” box to search for information on the paper in question. 
• Any lack of reporting on a particular issue can also hint at the social norms of the period. What seems important to historians and literary scholars today may not have been important in 17th and 18th Century England.

Challenges when searching the collection

• Common names will yield too many irrelevant results. 
  • For example, searching for Alexander Pope, the poet and satirist, might also retrieve results for any of the Roman Catholic popes named Alexander.
• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is not perfect.
  • Searching for phrases that span two separate pages will retrieve no results.
  • Smudgy print quality leads to pages with OCR errors.
• Collections of individual newspaper/periodical runs were often not complete. You may browse through a series of newspapers and discover that there are issues missing.
• There may be multiple copies of a particular issue of a newspaper. This means search results can be inflated.
• Because older newspapers copied each other’s content, you may appear to have retrieved several results, when in reality you have multiple cases of a single article. 
   

A British Columbia IP address is necessary for anyone accessing the Burney Newspapers Collection through the BC Electronic Library Network’s “Points to the Past” portal. This video shows you how to access the collection, and what to do if you are a distance student living outside British Columbia or Canada.
 

This video shows how to use the Advanced Search function in the 17th & 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection. It also looks at some of the database tools available. 

To skip to another segment, use the menu icon at the top left and choose the section in question.

Video timeline:
0:00 Intro
0:25 Research topic
0:45 Advanced search and Boolean operators
3:15 Keyword preview
3:57 Database tools
5:47 Permanent link

Context-specific terms are very useful when searching historical newspaper databases. This video examines using terms that may be considered archaic now, but are relevant and useful when searching historical sources. The video also discusses how changes in a given community’s culture and vocabulary may affect your database search. 

To skip to another segment, use the menu icon at the top left and choose the section in question.

Video timeline:
0:00 Intro
0:36 Search results with current politically correct terms
1:17 Examples of context-specific search terms
2:10 Finding context-specific terminology, including geographical terms
3:00 Changes in community and geographical names
5:39 Summary

Optical character recognition helps us find information in historical newspaper databases, but it doesn’t always work perfectly. This video shows what to watch out for, and what you can do to find more accurate information on your topic. The examples used in this video tutorial are from the 17th and 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

To skip to another segment, use the menu icon at the top left and choose the section in question.

Video timeline:
0:00 Intro
0:57 What is OCR?
1:23 OCR shortcomings and examples
3:24 Why OCR fails
4:36 OCR hacks
4:43 Synonyms
5:18 Browse adjacent issues of a publication
6:48 Follow citation trails
7:15 Find a specific periodical
8:27 Summary

The Times Digital Archive includes 200 years of news coverage from The Times (London), making it one of the more useful places to find primary sources for historical research. This video shows you how to access the Times Digital Archive from UFV library’s website, and also looks at some database tools. 

To skip to another segment, use the menu icon at the top left and choose the section in question.

Video Timeline:

0:00 Intro
0:42 Research topic
1:22 Finding Times Digital Archive on the library's homepage
2:15 Advanced search and Boolean operators
3:10 Search limiters
3:41 Using Boolean operators
5:14 Keyword preview
6:25 Database tools
7:38 Things to keep in mind: punctuation
7.54 Place names can change over time