Web Search for NYS Historic Newspapers Online
I was successful in creating a Web search plist for NYS Historic Newspapers Online. http://www.nyshistoricnewspapers.org
If you haven't heard of it, this is a free, fully searchable archive of many newspapers published in New York state from the 1700s to the present. The format starts with digitized scans that are then OCR'ed, mapped, and added to the database. Their current "pages available" count is 5,580,676.
Searches can be constrained by county, newspaper, and city (or the entire database can be searched), as well as by date. Strings are searched by parsing a string (such as a full name) into individual words, and retrieving all records where the words are found within a given proximity (such as 5 words apart). Each hit is presented as an image from the newspaper, and the interface includes tools to zoom in, save a portion (as JPEG), or print it directly.
Pretty fabulous.
My "0.1" version of a Reunion Web search extension is pretty blunt, but it does successfully find sample folks in my file who lived in NY state and had the fortune (or misfortune) of appearing in the newspaper. It takes the person's birth and death year, and their full name, submits them to the search engine across the entire state, and lets the chips fall where they may.
It's not nearly as successful for married women, unless they appeared in a newspaper before their marriage, because the [FMLN] string Reunion produces is the birth surname. Would love to hear some guidance on what else is available in the Web search syntax to improve that.
As well, I was not able to find recent discussion of this amazingly helpful feature. Keith Bage wrote a fantastic guide on "Creating 'Web Searches' for use in Reunion 10" in 2012, and responded to queries here. I'm hoping he sees this and knows how much I appreciate that guide and his hard work, as it helped me cobble this together in about an hour.
I will be glad to post the plist when it's been tested a bit more. And I invite replies to this thread from others who have written Reunion Web search plists, describing their experiences.
If you haven't heard of it, this is a free, fully searchable archive of many newspapers published in New York state from the 1700s to the present. The format starts with digitized scans that are then OCR'ed, mapped, and added to the database. Their current "pages available" count is 5,580,676.
Searches can be constrained by county, newspaper, and city (or the entire database can be searched), as well as by date. Strings are searched by parsing a string (such as a full name) into individual words, and retrieving all records where the words are found within a given proximity (such as 5 words apart). Each hit is presented as an image from the newspaper, and the interface includes tools to zoom in, save a portion (as JPEG), or print it directly.
Pretty fabulous.
My "0.1" version of a Reunion Web search extension is pretty blunt, but it does successfully find sample folks in my file who lived in NY state and had the fortune (or misfortune) of appearing in the newspaper. It takes the person's birth and death year, and their full name, submits them to the search engine across the entire state, and lets the chips fall where they may.
It's not nearly as successful for married women, unless they appeared in a newspaper before their marriage, because the [FMLN] string Reunion produces is the birth surname. Would love to hear some guidance on what else is available in the Web search syntax to improve that.
As well, I was not able to find recent discussion of this amazingly helpful feature. Keith Bage wrote a fantastic guide on "Creating 'Web Searches' for use in Reunion 10" in 2012, and responded to queries here. I'm hoping he sees this and knows how much I appreciate that guide and his hard work, as it helped me cobble this together in about an hour.
I will be glad to post the plist when it's been tested a bit more. And I invite replies to this thread from others who have written Reunion Web search plists, describing their experiences.