How to find newspapers in Google Books for free
Show Notes: Google Books is known for having millions of free digitized books. But did you know that it’s also packed with hidden old newspapers? Since newspapers don’t typically appear in your initial search results in Google Books, I’ll show you two ways to filter down to only newspapers. Plus I’ll also show you some of the most effective ways to quickly find the right ancestor and the right article.
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Show Notes
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Old newspapers are a tremendous resource for family history information. One of the most surprising places that you can find old newspapers is Google Books. However, newspapers don’t typically show up in the general searches we run at Google Books. It’s important to use specific strategies designed to effectively and find what you’re looking for.
We typically think of Google Books as a place where you look for books. However, we really need to change our thinking on that. Think of Google Books as a place to find printed material. At Google Books you could find not only books, but printed newspapers, catalogs, almanacs, magazines, anything that would have been published on paper. Google Books catalogs all the printed material it finds, and digitizes that which isn’t under copyright restrictions. That means that it’s more common to find older newspapers, books and so on that are digitized and searchable.
Dealing with Too Many Results
I love finding articles like this one about my husband’s grandfather, Raymond H. Cooke.
You can find newspaper articles like this at Google Books.
Newspapers clearly offer a lot more than just obituaries. You may be able to find all kinds of articles on what was going on in their life and their community.
We start searching at the Google Books homepage. There are a couple of different ways to find Google Books. You can just google Google Books, or you can go directly to the URL https://books.google.com/.
At Google Books, you can start by typing in an ancestor’s name such as Raymond H. Cooke, or topic of interest. What you will typically see is a list of books, many fairly recent, but no newspapers. In fact there will be typically be an abundance of results, many of which are not a good match. But don’t worry, we can improve these results.
Better Newspaper Results with Quotes
One of the easiest ways to fix this situation is to go back up to the search box and put quotes around the full name. This tells Google Books that I want this exact phrase (name), spelled the way I spelled it. This prevents us from getting results that contain the words but not within the context as a whole name. It also ensures that Cooke will be spelled with an “e”. Without the quotes we get too many non-matching results. Most included one or more of the words, often separate from each other, and some weren’t even spelled the way I spelled the name.
As you can see, using quotes is very effective at reducing unwanted results. However, we can do even more to improve newspaper search results at Google Books.
You’ll notice that most of the results you receive are books, some of which may be digitized and some that are not. What you don’t see typically are newspapers. So, our next strategy will fix this and give us only newspaper results.
Filtering to Only Newspaper Results
It might seem logical just to add the word newspaper to your search query. However, this doesn’t work. Google looks for the words in the text of the material. It doesn’t look at the word newspapers and understand that it’s a type of material.
However, Google Books does give us ways to filter results down to only newspapers. On the search results page you will see a filter menu below the main menu of tabs. If you don’t see it, click the Tools button.
Notice that Any Document is one of the filters. That means that right now our results are showing all types of documents that meet our search criteria including books, catalogs, magazines, newspapers, etc. Click that drop-down menu and select Newspapers. This will display only newspaper in the search results.
At the top of the results list you’ll see exact matches to your query. Sometimes, if there aren’t a lot of matches, Google will then remove the quotes you used, and show you additional results that match without quotes. So several pages of matches doesn’t always mean that they all match exactly. But the good news is, all the exact matches will display first.
Search Name Variations
My example of searching for “Raymond H. Cooke” is very specific. In order to find all the possible articles that mention Raymond, I will need to expand my search to include the name variations that might appear in the papers. Here are just a few examples:
- “Raymond Cooke”
- “Ray Cooke”
- “R. H. Cooke”
- “Raymond H. Cook” (because it’s very possible a spelling error could be made in the newspaper)
Another Way to Filter to Only Newspapers
Google Book’s Advanced Search is another way to filter down specifically to newspapers. It’s not as easy to find or use as the Tools menu, but it can prove very helpful.
There isn’t a link to Advanced Search on the Google Books home page. There are three ways to get to it.
#1 Use the URL
You can use the URL, but it’s not easy to remember. https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search A nice solution is to go there with this link and then add it as a bookmark in your web browser bar.
#2 Google Google Books Advanced Search
The easiest way to find the Advanced Search page for the Google Books is simply to google it.
#3 Any Google Books Catalog Page
The Advanced Search link appears in the search box on the catalog page of all items in Google Books. To find the page, run a search (it doesn’t matter what item you search for) and click the book or other item to open it. If the item is “full view” or “preview” you’ll need to close it. You can do that in the most recent version of the Google Books user interface by clicking the X in the top right corner of the page. This will then display the catalog page for the item, and you’ll see the Advanced Search link in the search field.
The Advanced Search page provides you with a special form. You can use this to run your search as well. You can type the names or phrases that you want to be exact in the Exact Phrase field. Best of all, in the Content section you can click the button for Newspapers to filter your results only to newspapers.
So already, we’re quickly finding newspapers within this massive catalog of over 25 million items in Google Books. I have a few more suggestions of ways to find what you’re looking for in newspapers specifically.
Adding Location to Search
If you want to be look for ancestors in Google Books, it really helps to add a location.
When you look at the search results, you’ll notice that it doesn’t give you a location in the result’s short descriptive paragraph (called a snippet). That makes it a little more challenging to be able to figure out if the items is talking about the right person. Where our ancestors lived is part of what sets them apart from everyone else by the same name. The result usually doesn’t tell us even where the newspaper was published. Try adding the name of your ancestor’s town, county or state to your search query.
Adding Timeframe to Search
While the snippets on the results page show the date of the item, we might have a lot of items to look through. It would be nice to narrow it down to items published during your ancestor’s lifetime. It’s not to say that there might not be a newspaper article published after an ancestor’s death, but it can help to start by first just searching during their lifetime.
On the initial results page, make sure the Tools filter menu it turned on. You’ll find Anytime in the filter menu next to Any Document. Click the Anytime drop-down menu. Here you can select a century. Click Custom Range and enter the years. For example, 1865 to 1930. This will filter your results list down to newspapers published between those years. It’s another great way to filter out results for other people with the same name who didn’t live at the same time. Filtering for both timeframe and the location can really help you zero in on the right person.
The Source of the Newspapers at Google Books
Google Books has not always had newspapers as part of their collection. The digitized newspapers found there today come from the old Google News Archive. This was a newspaper digitization project that was discontinued several years ago. In the last few years they’ve been adding the collection to Google Books. And now with the new Google Books user interface, they are easier to search and use than ever before.
The old Google News Archive can be found at https://news.google.com/newspapers. This old website can come in handy if you’re not sure if Google Books has the issues that you need of a particular newspaper title.
Start by going to https://news.google.com/newspapers and click the letter at the top of the screen that corresponds to the first letter of the first word in the title of the newspaper. For example, if you want to check to see if they have The Lawrence Daily Gazette, and if so which issues, you would click “L”. If you find the newspaper the website will also tell you how many issues are in the collection and what dates they cover. Then you can head to Google Books and search on the title.
It’s possible that Google may have added additional issues since the old Google News Archive closed. You can check this at Google Books by searching on the title and using the Any Time filter to specify the years.
Start Searching for Newspapers at Google Books
Now you can find newspapers at Google Books quickly and efficiently. I hope you’ll leave a comment and let me know about the article that you find!
Resources
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Show Notes
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1. Quickly find free stuff on the big genealogy websites
You probably have a subscription to one or more of the big genealogy websites like Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com or Fold3.com. The fastest way to find out what’s new at these websites is to visit these specific pages, and bookmark them on your web browser.
FamilySearch (free): https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list
Click “Last Updated” to sort all the collections starting with the most recently updated. Use the filters to narrow down to only the types of collections you’re interested in (record type, location date or any combination.)
Bookmark webpages on your web browser bar:
- Right-click on the browser bar and select Add Folder.
- Name the folder something like Gen Sites.
- Navigate to the first website.
- In the browser bar, click the icon and URL.
- Drag and drop it on to a blank area of the browser bar.
- Continue to go to websites and add them to the folder.
- Right-click on any item in the folder or on the browser bookmark bar you want to delete or rename. (It can be helpful to shorten the site names.)
- When you want to check a site, simply click the folder and click the website.
Ancestry.com: https://www.ancestry.com/cs/recent-collections
Ancestry’s Recently Added and Updated Collections on Ancestry page does a nice job of differentiating between New and Update. Since collections may be regularly updated, it’s nice to spot the ones that are brand new.
The dropdown menu at the top of the page is set to United States by default. However, you can use it to view the new content for other countries as well.
Free Collections at Ancestry: https://www.ancestry.com/search/categories/freeindexacom/
Findmypast: https://www.findmypast.com/blog/new
Findmypast is primarily focused on records from the United Kingdom, although they do have some records from other countries including the United States. While they do have a “What’s New?” page, it’s not a list directly from their catalog. Instead, it’s a compilation of their weekly Friday blog post on new and updated records starting with the most recently published. This means you’d have to click through and read each post. Here’s a search hack to work around this.
- Go to Google.com.
- Type in the keyword(s) for what you want, followed by a space.
- Next, Type site: and paste the page’s URL (https://www.findmypast.com/blog/new)
- Here’s what your search will look like:
- “derbyshire advertiser” newspaper site:https://www.findmypast.com/blog/new
- On the results page, click Tools. A filter menu will pop up. Click the Any Time drop-down and select the desired timeframe such as the past month or past year, or a custom range of 2020 through 2023.
- Press Enter on your keyboard and your results will narrow down only to matching results from that timeframe.
Fold3: https://www.fold3.com/search
This website, owned by Ancestry, has a primary focus on military records, although you will find other records as well.
You can find the most recent content additions by going to the search page and selecting a country and other descriptions of types of records that interest you. Then on the results page, click the Sort: Relevance button and select Sort: Newest First. You can narrow the list down further by clicking the Any Time button and selecting increments up to the last year.
2. How to Search a Specific Website
Use site search to dig into websites:
- that don’t have a search feature,
- that have a search feature that’s not great,
- or to double-check that you found everything at that site.
Essentially, you can use Google search as a custom search engine for a specific website.
For example, USGenWeb is a free genealogy website that has been around for a long time and has a vast number of pages and content. There isn’t a search box on the home page, but you can click Search & Site Map in the menu. However, you’ll notice that their search engine is powered by a third party called FreeFind which has been around since 1998. Because it’s free and a third party, the search field is definitely not secure. Since that’s the case, you might as well use the largest and most powerful search engine in the world, Google, to search to run your search instead. Google’s site search is the way to do that.
A note about websites like USGenWeb: Make sure that you are searching the correct website.
Notice the URL for the USGenWeb website: https://usgenweb.org/index.html. Click the desired state on the map on the home page. Now, look at the URL again.
Example: Indiana http://ingenweb.org/
Notice that it’s actually a different website. Each state has the two-letter state abbreviation at the beginning of the URL. Use the state address when conducting a site search.
Example Search: If I wanted to find all mentions of a surname in the state, my site search would look like this:
Hulse site:http://ingenweb.org/
You can use the Google search operators listed in my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox to be even more specific about what you want to find.
3. How to Search Websites from within RootsMagic
As genealogists, we spend a lot of time in our genealogy software programs. The one I use, and it’s one of the most popular, is RootsMagic. So, it would be really convenient to be able to run searches at genealogy websites where I have a subscription, or in search engines like Google which will scour the entire internet. Well, you can so let me show you how to do that in RootsMagic.
- Select the individual you want to research.
- Click SEARCH in the menu.
- Click the WebSearch
- Edit the person as needed.
- To select which websites to search, click the Provider
- Check the box “show results in external web browser” for more flexibility and to get the URL for Web Tags (which you can add on the Person profile page.)
The main part of the WebSearch screen is a web browser window that displays your results.
The left and right arrows at the top of the page display allowing you to go back and forth between web pages.
Add WebTag adds a link to the current website to the card of the person on whom you’re searching. To open your results in your regular web browser instead, click the Use External Browser checkbox. (Note that this disables the Add WebTag button.)
For websites that require logging in (such as FamilySearch, Ancestry and Findmypast) the initial result will be a log in page on the website. Once you log in, the search results should appear.
How to Manage Search Providers in RootsMagic
You can add and edit providers.
- Click SEARCH in the menu.
- Click Edit Providers (at the bottom of the search box, above the list of people.)
- Under the Standard Search Providers you’ll see not just genealogy websites, but also search engines like Google and Bing.
- Click the Custom Search Providers
- Click the Add
- Type in the name of the provider.
- In your web browser, go to the provider’s home page.
- Use the search engine to search for John Doe 1700-1800.
- Copy the URL (Ctrl + C) of the search results page.
- Paste the URL (Ctrl + V) into the Search Results URL field in RootsMagic.
- Click the OK button which will close the box.
- You will now find the provider you just added at the bottom of the Provider list.
- If there are any providers listed that you don’t want to show up in the list of providers, uncheck the box for that provider in Manage Search Providers.
Tips:
- You can always resize your windows to fit side by side.
- Right-click links in RootsMagic to open in a new browser tab at any time.
- If you want searches to be conducted immediately without editing the person’s information, check the box for AutoSearch.
- Click PEOPLE in the menu to return to that person’s profile in your tree.
4. Browsing Offline Websites
In order for Google to be able to deliver websites as search results, it has to visit them. It has bots that “crawl” the website. When it does, it keeps a copy known as a cached version. Google keeps cached version of all websites.
Occasionally websites are down, or they go offline temporarily for a variety of reasons. This search trick will give you a way to browse the website until it comes back online.
The Cache: search operator can be used in the Google search field followed by the URL of the webpage you are trying to access. Here’s an example of a search query that will let you browse the Genealogy Gems website if we are temporarily offline:
Cache:https://lisalouisecooke.com
It’s slow for browsing a website because you need to run a cache search for each page. But it’s great if you already have the link (such as a link to a video and show notes in our newsletter – just right-click on the red button and copy the link). It’s very handy if a link you have is broken and you want to see it again and perhaps try and track down a working link (as in the case where they have moved the page.)
5. How to Search with Photos and Images
How to Upload an Image to Google Image Search (Reverse Search):
- Digitize the image and save it to your computer.
- On your computer, go to https://images.google.com or google Google Images.
- Click the camera icon in the search field.
- Navigate to and select the digitized photo you saved to your computer.
- Google will attempt to find that exact image, or the closest visually. Currently, Google can identify basic elements in the photo and better-known subjects.
- Adjust the frame to crop or click dots to focus on search certain elements in the image.
- Click the Find Image Source button at the top to dig further.
How to Search an Online Photo with Google Images (Reverse Search)
- Right-click on a PC (Control-Click on a Mac) on the image on the web page.
- In the pop-up menu select Copy Image Address.
- Got to Google Images.
- Click the camera icon in the search field.
- Paste the image URL that you copied to your computer clipboard (on a PC use Control V on your keyboard.)
- Click the Search by Image button to run your search.
Learn More:
Resources
Download the show notes handout. The first page can be printed separately as a one-page cheat sheet.