Sutherland Shire Libraries Staff News

Ref Rap: Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program

The Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program is an initiative of the National Library of Australia. It involves the digitisation of a large number of out-of-copyright (1803-1954) newspapers across Australia for online access by the public. It is an interesting project, but it is still very new and there is a lot that needs to be digitised. There are currently 9.13 million articles available for searching. It is hoped that by 2010 there will be 40 million! At present there are four NSW papers: the Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, the Sun-Herald, Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser and the Sydney Morning Herald (not all text from these newspapers have been digitised). There are also a number of other state and national newspapers making this a good resource for Patrons seeking historical information and news about other areas of Australia. Articles appear in their digitised form with translated text alongside them. Users may search, browse, tag, comment on and correct these articles.

Search

The search box is at the top of the screen. Wildcard and truncation searches can be conducted using an *. You can also undertake phrase and Boolean searching. To search for a specific date you can enter your keyword and the date. For example, when I typed in 'War 13 March 1945' it produced results that were related to that day and gave me the option to search for articles that were issued on that day about war. There are a few different ways that you can search for dates. See the help section for more details. Some of the newspapers that have been digitised are difficult to read and the Optical Character Recognition may have made errors in transcribing the print so a word or title may not be spelled correctly. If you are having trouble finding a particular article, alternative spellings might help. The search results screen allows you to refine results. The user could restrict them by Newspaper title, Category, illustration type, decade or word count.

Advanced Search

The advanced search enables more extensive searches for articles. The user can search for illustration captions or the first four words of an article. They can search for articles within specific newspapers, between specific dates and part of specific categories (i.e. advertising, detailed lists, results guides, family notices and news). They can also restrict results to those with illustrations and those of a particular length.

Browse

The digitised newspapers can be browsed by publication title, State, Category, Tag and Date. Some of the tags include 'Murder', 'Mine' and 'Bendigo'. Browse results can be limited and sorted. If for example, a student is looking for newspaper advertisements in 1815, they can browse by 'advertisements', and limit the results to '1810 to 1819'.

Printing and Saving

Articles can be printed and saved. If a user prints an article, it will print the actual digitised image rather than the transcription of the text. The size of the printed article will depend on the zoom level at the time the image is printed. Users can also save the image as a PDF in Adobe reader. See the Help pages on this site for assistance with printing and saving.

Tagging

Users are able to add tags to an article that relate to the content. In practice, some tags can be too broad or general. However, if you find the right tag they can be a good jumping off point to explore a subject further. To view other articles linked to a particular tag just click on the tag link. Tags are user generated however, meaning they are dependant on a user recognising the subject heading and applying it to the article. So if you do click on a tag, keep in mind that it will not provide a comprehensive link to all articles related to that subject.

Comments

Users can make comments about articles. Comments can provide more information about an article or subject. For example, in an article about a linotype machine a user has commented on the history of the linotype and current printing methods. Comments can be public or private. Public comments are obviously open to the public. Private comments may be used by researchers to record their thoughts or further information on a particular article. All comments are bound by the terms of use.

Correcting Text

As the text from articles is translated through Optical Character Recognition, there is a chance that some articles will be translated incorrectly. There are also cases where part of an article is missing. Users are able to correct text and save the changes to the database. They are also able to add characters and missing text. Corrected text will not overwrite the original text - both versions will be searchable.

Questions

Go to the site and try some of these questions. I have issued a question for each branch to answer in the comments box (please include your search strategy in your answer) but by all means feel free to answer all the questions:

1. I am looking for articles about the Newcastle Steel works during 1935. What search strategy did you use? How many articles did you find? (EN)

2. How can I find articles with pictures of Phar Lap? (ME)

3. I'd like to look at death notices in the Sydney Morning Herald from the year 1846. I am particularly looking for a notice about Jane Bowden. How old was she? (CR)

4. I am looking for articles on Japanese War Crimes. What can I do to search/browse for these articles? (CA)

5. What are some of the ways this database be used to assist our Patrons? (MI)

6. I am looking for articles about Breaker Morant released on 28th March 1902. (SY)

7. I am looking for articles on Germany between April 1938 to April 1939 (SU)

8. I am looking for advertisements published in September 1803. How many results did you get? (BU)

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Photo Permissions at the Library

This is an interesting approach to obtaining photo permissions in the library from Topeka Library in the US as reported by David King...
Photo Permissions at the Library

They re-wrote their policy to try and strike a balance between making it easier to take photos and video in the library (they also had amassed lots of photos of the backs of heads!) and still giving people the chance to opt out if they so desired.

I think it brings Topeka's policy more into line with how the world works.  If you're walking along the street and someone takes a photo with you in it, they don't ask your permission before they post it on Facebook or Flickr. At the same time, I think people expect to be asked for permission if someone intended to use a close up photo of them for a promotion.

Libraries make the Sydney Morning Herald (in a good way)

Sydney Libraries received a nice write up in the Sydney Morning Herald's (Sydney) Magazine. It talks about Libraries being a great place to be. It's a bit of fluff really, but good press all the same.  As far as I can see it's not on the SMH web site but you can read it on ANZRC.  If you want to see the pictures you've probably still got the November issue of The (Sydney) Magazine hanging around.