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Frequently Asked Questions

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How do I access the newspapers?
There are various routes to locate the newspapers, but the fastest is to click the Collections tab. Directly below that Collection summary, you'll see the link, "View the items in [collection title]. That link will take you to a list of all the items in that collection. Click the thumbnail (picture) of the item to open it; then, to open the item into the full PDF reader, click again. 

How can I find a specific date or title?
On the right of the Items page, above the item thumbnails, there are various Sort options. The "Date Added" option will sort newspapers in rough chronological order (ascending or descending). Unfortunately, the order is not always consistent; we are working to add a Sort by Newspaper Date option as well.

How do I search for a specific newspaper?
In the upper right hand corner of our site is a search box. The site allows users to search its metadata (information that has been entered for each newspaper issue: title, date, subject headings, and brief description of that issue's content).
Type in a word or two to capture what you're looking for (e.g. a title, specific year, etc.). As always, you may have to experiment with search terms to locate relevant items!
NOTE: If you get too many hits, try clicking the three dots at the right of the search bar to restrict your search. Alternatively, pull down to Advanced Search to refine your search.
TIP: If you want a specific year of a specific newspaper, use Advanced Search, then pull down to the Collection for that newspaper. That way, you won't see irrelevant items from the same year, but other Collections.

The search returned no results for my term, "tea," but I know the British must have advertised for and talked about tea! 
The Omeka search engine does not return word queries less than or equal to three letters, so the engine will return only this: "Your query returned no results." Try descriptors longer than 3 letters, to find what you are looking for. 

Can I use Omeka's search engine to find text WITHIN each newspaper PDF?
Unfortunately not yet, though we plan to add that capability once we are able to extract functional text from the issues. (OCR of historical newspapers is a difficult task--feel free to ask us why!).
Currently, the only way to search within a specific issue is to open that issue in your browser, then use Command-F to open a search bar and type your search there. The newspaper OCR is not perfect, because 19th century typeface is highly variable, but it is pretty good!

Are the newspapers downloadable, or only available online?
The contents of the library are PDF files which can be downloaded for free. Each "item" is a hyperlink that you can click on to open and then download the PDF file. 

I wish to contribute content to the site. How do I do that?
We welcome contributions of new newspaper collections, as well as lists of relevant research, etcetera! Please use the Contact Us tab to the right of the menu bar to get in touch.

Do you have a newsletter? How do I find out about project activities?
This archive was created with the objective of making these hard-to-access, endangered newspapers available to a global community. Our sister site, AnglophoneChile.org, was created as an interconnected research hub. Please add your email address to that site's News page and you'll be updated when we, or related projects, are organizing events or have news to share! 
We also welcome your own updates about related publications, events, etc. and will be happy to share them via our News alerts.