by Lisa Cooke | Jan 11, 2015 | 01 What's New, British, Newspaper, Research Skills
The British Newspaper Archive celebrated its 3rd birthday recently by looking back at how people are searching its 9 million+ newspaper pages. To date, the five 
most common searches are:
1. Football
2. Murder
3. Death
4. Jack the Ripper
5. Railway
Not what you expected? Your digitized newspaper searches as a family historian may be a little more specific and less sports-and-murder oriented. But are they too general to yield successful results?
Here’s a tip from Lisa: “With 9 million searchable pages, the key to finding what you want is to use the Advanced Search.
“You’ll find it under the search box. My initial search for my husband’s great grandfather resulted in tens of thousands of hits until I included mandatory keywords, his name as a phrase, a defined time frame, and zeroed in on advertisements. The 299 results were far more manageable and resulted in several fantastic finds!”
Armed with these tips, those with Irish or English roots should explore The British Newspaper Archive, even if you’ve searched there before. “We’ve come a long way since the website launched on 29 November 2011 with 4 million historic newspaper pages,” says a press release. “The collection is now more than twice the size, with over 9 million fully searchable pages available from 300 British and Irish titles. The newspapers cover 1710 – 1954, a much broader time period than at launch. If you weren’t able to find a particular person, event or place when The British Newspaper Archive launched, it’s well worth looking again now.” Visit www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk to try a search for free.”
Learn more about searching historical newspapers in Lisa’s book, How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers. Chapter 4 is all about the newspaper search process, and includes a copy-able Newspaper Research Worksheet.
Last of all, check out this fun infographic below from the British Newspaper Archive in honor of its birthday:
by Lisa Cooke | Dec 18, 2013 | 01 What's New, Inspiration, Organization
Do you have old family letters that really should be shared with loved ones, but you’re not sure how to go about doing it? You’re not 
alone. Jane wrote in recently with that very question. She came across my blog post 6 Tips: How to Organize Your Family History while searching the web for ways to solve her own family history problem:
“Now that the grandchildren of my parents (long since deceased) are raising children of their own, I would like to share at least some of the 75 or so letters that my mother wrote to my dad in their first year of marriage, 1947. Her letters are filled with many of the same concerns that still plague new moms.”
Jane goes on to mention three options she’s considered:
- “Scanning them, and then printing out the sheets into a spiral binder has some possibilities, but the chances of busy moms with young children sitting down to read such a tome seem minimal.
- Taking just a few of the letters, and adding a photo (I have very few from that time period!) to make a little book (through Shutterfly or Picaboo or such) would be another idea. Although that doesn’t really do justice to the whole year of letters.
- Emailing a transcription of one letter a week (for a year?) has also occurred to me, but I’m really not sure I know how to proceed.”
She concluded by asking me to direct her to anyplace on my website where can i buy malaria medication in india I’ve addressed a question like this. Here’s what I told her:
“If you are comfortable with the letters being public, I would recommend starting a blog and featuring a letter in each post. Our kids and grandkids are much more comfortable online and they can easily subscribe to your blog which can automatically email the posts to them. An added benefit of blogging is that other folks who might be related can find your family history content through Google search, perhaps helping you connect. I talk a lot about this on my free Genealogy Gems Podcast (at my site and in iTunes). I have a series of free videos at my Genealogy Gems YouTube channel that show you how to start a blog for free.
As for publishing small books through a service like Shutterfly or Lulu, I’ve also covered that on my website. Genealogy Gems Premium Members have access to three Premium episodes on the subject that include instructional videos:
- Premium Episode 54: Publish Your Family History on Demand Part 3
- Premium Episode 53: Publish Your Family History on Demand Part 2
- Premium Episode 52: Publish Your Family History on Demand Part 1
I also cover these books including an example of one I created in my book Genealogy Gems: Ultimate Research Strategies (Chapter 13).”
Hopefully these resources can help you with your challenge, Jane, as well as any others who want to know how to organize old letters (or other precious family memorabilia) and share them.
