| Where can I search newspapers online? |
| Many newspapers do have version of their publication online, but they are very reduced and transitory editions covering breaking news, after all they make money from selling the newspapers. In terms of tracing ancestor, there are no online publications. The Times, and a number of other publications, have been indexed, but even these are not freely available. Palmer's Index to the Times is online but only available to institutions. Ultimately you will still need to access the newspaper to read the full article. |
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| Do Colindale hold all the newspapers ever published? |
| Although Colindale holds a vast number of newspapers they certainly do not carry all publications. In the early years publishers failed to send their publications to the British Library. During the second world war bombing caused damage to the building and destroyed part of the collection (luckily the method of binding the newspapers into volumes reduced the loss). |
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| Is Colindale the only place I can search newspapers? |
| Many Record Offices and Local Study Libraries do maintain a collection of newspapers for their locality. It is worth checking with them as they may have the newspaper you require. |
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| Where can I find out if a newspaper or journal is available? |
| The Newspaper Library catalogue is available online and can be search using locations or keywords. The catalogue is available at http://prodigi.bl.uk/nlcat/ |
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| Do you get to read the actual newspapers? |
| Many are available in their original form. The editions are bound into volumes covering a quarter or a whole year depending on the number of pages and the regularity of publication. More recent and more requested papers are normally available as microfilm. |
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| Are all birth, marriages and deaths reported in local newspapers? |
| No, the announcement had to be sent to the newspaper and had to be paid. Only the rich or socially minded would bother to do this |
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| What do I need in order to have a good chance of finding details about my ancestors. |
| Firstly you will need some luck as not all newspapers were equal. The majority were run to earn money so they carried a large amount of adverts and very little news. |
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| It helps if the person or event had a degree of notoriety. Regional newspapers carried plenty of adverts, this is what made the owner rich, they also carried news from London and overseas, and news from the local law courts. The remaining space would then carry human-interest stories. Interesting crimes, death of personages, murders, inquests and scandal had a good chance of appearing in the newspaper. |
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| It helps if you know where and when the event occurred. Searching through newspapers is a slow process. To check one month of the average daily paper can take 30 to 45 minutes. So if you only know a year then you would expect at least 3 hours of searching, and if you are unlucky over 6 hours. Similarly if all you have is a county then there could be many newspapers that would have to be searched. |
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| Newspapers are organic and deteriorate, and part of the work of the library is conservation. However it is long term and occasionally a volume of newspapers is too fragile to view. |
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| You can read more about the holdings at http://www.bl.uk/collections/collect.html. |
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| There was an article in a National or Local newspaper. Could you get it for me? |
| Possibly, just how lucky do you feel? |
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| Unless you can tell me when and in what newspaper you will probably be wasting your money. I do not enjoy scanning through hours of newspapers and you will not enjoy the bill, especially with nothing to show for it. |
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| It can take an hour to check one weekly newspaper over one year. You have to be rich to want a more deatiled search |
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| If you find an article or reference to an ancestor what will I get? |
| If the paper is available in its original form then a photocopy of the page is taken. The size of the photocopy will depend on the original size, but normally you will receive an A3 image of the whole page. |
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| Where the newspapers are on microfilm then a print from the microfilm will be taken. The quality is not as good as for the original newspapers, especially for pictures and photographs. |
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| Higher quality prints using photography are also available at extra cost. Further details of copying and charges are available at http://www.bl.uk/collections/copy.html |
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