Website improvements
25 results found
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Play Amazing games online
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1 vote -
Exploring the Newspapers Available and Their Coverage Years
Hello everyone,
I’m interested in understanding the full scope of newspapers available on the British Newspaper Archive. While I know the site hosts a vast collection, I’m curious about which specific newspapers are included and the exact years of coverage for each.
Are major national newspapers like The Times or The Guardian fully archived, and if not, which years are accessible?
What about regional newspapers? Are there certain counties or towns that are particularly well-represented?Thank you in advance for sharing your knowledge!
Snake Game1 vote -
Discussing the Quality of Scans and OCR Text
Hi everyone,
I want to start a conversation about the quality of scans and OCR text in the British Newspaper Archive. Personally, I’ve noticed that the clarity of scans can vary a lot depending on the original paper, the condition of the page, and even the printing style of the time.
A few questions I’d love to hear your thoughts on
1. How do you work around OCR errors when doing searches? Do you use wildcards, or just read through the scans manually?
2. Have you noticed certain decades or newspapers that tend to scan particularly well (or badly)?
3.…1 vote -
Improving Search Filters for More Accurate Results
Hello,
I’ve been making extensive use of the archive recently and really appreciate the vast collection. However, I’ve noticed that search results can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming, especially when dealing with common names or widely used terms. Even with date ranges and location filters applied, it can still take quite some time to find the exact article I’m looking for.
Would it be possible to introduce more advanced filtering options? For example, filters based on publication type (regional vs national), article length, or even the ability to exclude certain terms. I think these improvements would make research more efficient…
1 vote -
Enlarge image area and remove distractions
Please enlarge the image area and remove the tools that sit on top. The image area is really small as it is. Also, please gray background. There are too many distractions in viewing the images.
1 vote -
How to Search for Obituaries with Limited Information?
Hi everyone,
I'm hoping someone here might be able to offer some advice. I'm trying to locate an obituary for a distant relative who I believe passed away in the late 1950s or early 1960s, likely in the Manchester area. Unfortunately, I only have a rough estimate of the time period and a partial name — I know the surname (Thompson), and possibly the first initial (J or G).
I've tried some keyword combinations in the search bar, but I'm struggling to narrow it down without hundreds of unrelated results. Are there any tips or tricks for refining obituary searches…
1 vote -
Option to turn off unwanted frills.
Please provide an option to turn off saved searches and all other pop-ups so that the search is simple like it used to be.
1 vote -
Web Site performance and OCR
Firstly I think you are doing a great thing with this archive; good job!
However my experience of trying to contribute to your project in a small way and correct the plethora of errors which your very basic OCR generates in the articles I am researching has been very frustrating. Reviewing and correcting a few thousand words is taking hours when it should take maybe only an hour if the performance of the website was quicker and if the user interface for editing had been better designed. In Microsoft Word or some similar software I can see all the errors…4 votes -
Save a single article
I have been reading for a couple of years that you hope to make it possible to save a single article instead of a whole page but I haven’t seen any progress in providing this, are you actually going to provide this option? it is why I let my subscription lapse, I would rejoin if this was sorted.
14 votes -
academic citations
adding a citation button to help with citing your amazing newspaper
14 votes -
Search for a phrase is often ignored
When I search for a phrase, for example "W. Hunter" to get only hits for "W. Hunter" it is very annoying that I get endless hits for just "W." Can the search engine not be taught to ONLY look for "W. Hunter" ?
6 votes -
Exact searching
Because words like "and", "of" etc. seem to be used as operators, I often can't use them in the way I'd like. For example, I want to search for the EXACT phrase "The Horse and Hounds". At the moment, I can't see how to do it.
I would like to be able to search for an EXACT phrase , e.g. "The Horse and Hounds" without2 votes -
Pages for all counties
Some coverage of all uk counties in the first instance...still many with no pages at all.
1 vote -
adoption of corrections
When I edit an article's text, when are those corrections taken into account for a future search? I have been doing corrections for months and none of them have been picked up in subsequent searches.
6 votes -
A Timeline, simple base line of world/UK event dates occurring at, or near the atricle date
Place the articles in some kind of timeline, a simple baseline graph idea would help I suppose. I don't have a plan but whenever I find an article concerning an ancestor it would help to picture the time he was living in - who was on the throne, world action concerning Britain etc.
6 votes -
Highlighted articles
I'd like to be able to download and/or print a page that highlights articles of interest as they appear on the screen.
1 voteCan you give us some more detail here? How would we work out which article were of interest to you, or are you just wanting an easier way to save and print individual articles as you come across them?
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rewards for repairing OCR efforts
a reward system for repairing defective OCR results
7 votes -
Publication issue
Provide the issue number of the publication in the header information.
2 votes -
Poor Page Quality
Ability to flag scan quality issues with some pages and get them rectified.
22 votesGood idea – we will add this into the list
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Academic Citation
The BNA has become an invaluable tool for researchers. I'd like the ability to download a citation of the records in the common formats MLA, Chicago etc.Your database is likely to contain the required information such as source, date, page number and so on. Is there any chance of such a facility being added?
71 votes
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