National Library of Australia

Frequently Asked Questions

Which newspaper titles are included?

A selection of Australian newspapers published between 1803 and the copyright cut-off date of 1954 will be available. See Selected Newspapers for more information.

Can newspapers digitised by other libraries and organisations be included?

The National Library of Australia is interested in finding out what other Australian newspapers are being digitised. We are developing a model for national collaboration and intend to include regional newspapers in this Program. See Get Involved! to find out more.

What is OCR?

OCR is short for 'Optical Character Recognition'. It is a method of converting text contained in images, which cannot normally be searched, into text that is fully searchable. This is completed through the use of OCR software.

What does 4 million pages consist of?

This is about 475,000 individual newspaper issues, which will consist of about 40 million news stories.

What are article categories?

Each article was given a category to define its subject or type when it was processed. The aim of this is to enable users to better limit their searches to types of articles they are interested in e.g. News articles only, and to help with relevancy ranking. The description of categories is here: http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/project_details/documents/ANDP_Article_categories_v1.3.pdf

Why is the electronically translated text sometimes incorrect or different to the text that I can read on the newspaper page?

The electronically translated text is created using automated software known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The computer 'eye' that looks at an image and translates it into searchable text is often not as good as the human eye. On good quality images the text is generally translated accurately and well; however if the source material is of poor quality (e.g. scanned newspapers) the results can vary significantly and translations may include incorrect characters, words, question marks or what looks like 'gobbly gook'. This happens when the computer eye does not see a clear black and white image. More information about OCR is here: http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/project_details/documents/ANDP_OCR_overview_002.pdf

Why is the electronically translated text corrected on a line-by-line basis?

Each line of the electronically translated text is linked to a location on the article image. Through correcting line-by-line these links can be maintained, which allows clicking of the text to move the article image to that location on the screen (synchronisation).

I have corrected the text 'horsos' in an article to 'horses', why does a search for 'horsos' bring up the article that was corrected?

Corrected text does not overwrite the original text of the article. Both the corrected text and the original text are indexed and searched.

I am trying to find an article which I know contains particular distinctive words. Why doesn't this article appear in the search results?

Your search is looking across the electronically translated text (see above) produced by the OCR process. If the words have not been translated accurately, then the system will not be able to find these terms, even though you may be able to see them on the newspaper page with your own eyes. This is when it is a good idea to correct the electronically translated text to improve the searching for others.

I have noticed that searches for some names, in particular names containing an apostrophe (e.g. O'Reilly) or a 'Mc', do not always retrieve the expected results. What techniques can I use to find these names?

Punctuation marks are often not indexed by search engines as they are rarely an integral part of the word, which may result in difficulties searching for names that contain apostrophes. To get around this, try replacing the punctuation mark with a space or removing it from the search term alltogether (i.e. search for "OReilly" or "O Reilly"). With names beginning with "Mc", the "c" may beprinted as an apostrophe, so searching without the "c" may produce additional results (i.e. search for "MHugh" or "M Hugh" as well as "McHugh").

I am using an index to browse for an article. Why isn't the article where the index says it is?

There are four main reasons why an article may not be where the index says it is:

  1. The edition of the newspaper in Australian Newspapers Beta is different to the edition that was used to make the index.
  2. The page referred to in the citation is missing from Australian Newspapers Beta.
  3. The index has an incorrect citation.
  4. The page sequence number in Australian Newspapers Beta is not the page number as it appears in the index.

If you are using an index and unable to find articles referred to in the index, please advise us (using the contact form here) of the index that you are using and some of the citations that you are unable to find in Australian Newspapers Beta.

How is the relevance of an article determined?

In determining the relevance of an article (and therefore which results appear at the top of the search results list), a number of factors are taken into account, including how often the search terms appear, where in the article the search terms appear and how rare the search terms are. For a full description of relevancy ranking in Australian Newspapers Beta see the relevancy ranking document on the ANDP website at: http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/project_details/documents/ANDP_Relevancy_ranking.pdf

What is the difference between correcting the electronically translated text and adding comments?

Correcting the electronically translated text makes changes to the electronically translated text in the database and improves accuracy of searching across terms for other people. The electronically translated text should exactly match what is printed on the newspaper page. The 'add Notes' feature enables users to provide further information about the events of the article in question, or state if they believe there is journalistic error in the original article.

Sometimes my search term is not highlighted - why?

Exact term matches are always highlighted. However the search engine automatically performs a 'fuzzy' search so that close matches are also found. Close matches are not usually highlighted in the electronically translated text or on the article image.

Why do the 'Print' and 'Save as...' views break the article into several images?

The 'Print' and 'Save As' views break the article down into several images so that it can be printed on A4 pages. These views do not reflect the appearance of the article on the original newspaper page. If a column needs to be split so that it will fit on the page, the images will overlap to ensure that no information is lost.

How do I change the size of the article in the 'Print' and 'Save As...' views?

The size of the article in the 'Print' and 'Save As' views is determined by the current zoom level in the article view. To change the size of the article in this view, change the zoom level in the article view until the desired size is reached.

How do I cite an article found on this website?

We recommend citing the article as an electronic document using your institution's preferred citation style. Use the URL on the top left hand side of the article view (between the Tags box and the Print icon), e.g. 'Cite: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article1115857'. This URL is a persistent identifier which will always open the same article, whereas the URL in the address bar may not.

How long will it take for articles with the box 'The newspaper issue containing this article is currently being processed. This issue will be accessible shortly' to be available?

Articles with this indicator attached to them will normally be available within 10 working days.

Can I search for just the front pages?

Yes. To find just the front pages use the following syntax:

aircraft missing firstpageseq:1

This will only find page 1 articles about missing aircraft. To find other page numbers use this syntax:

 court reports (firstpageseq:4 OR firstpageseq:5)  

That will find articles about court reports that have the first page of the article on page 4 or 5.

There isn’t a way of finding articles on the last page (unless you know what the last page number of a run of issues is).

I am having trouble signing up to the service, it won’t accept my name.

The username must be between 4 and 32 characters long can contain only alphabetic characters, digits, dashes (-) and full stops(.). The username must start with an alphabetic character and may not contain spaces or be already registered. Please also ensure that you click in the box so that a tick appears, which indicates that you accept the Terms of Use.

Why do I get an error message sometimes when I try to use the truncation symbol?

Sometimes when searching using the truncation symbol* an error message appears.  This is because there is a limit on the amount of results the search engine can execute a truncation on. The limit is 1024.  Using a wildcard may be an alternative.  The wildcard ? looks for only a single replacement word  e.g. rabbit* would find rabbits and rabbiting.  Rabbit?  Would find rabbits.

I’m doing an exact phrase search using quotation marks e.g. “Melbourne Cup” but the results are finding other things as well, why is that?

When you search for an exact phrase in quotations the search engine looks for and retrieves those matches first and displays them at the top of the list.  It also broadens the search by truncating terms and also finding terms not directly  next to each other.  This is known as fuzzy searching.  These other results will be at the bottom of the list. This helps people in searches where the OCR is not fully accurate.

Can I copy the images and use them in Wikipedia, and how should I cite/credit them?

Yes it is OK to do use the images on Wikipedia and other websites.  The library does not own copyright on the images or the original newspapers.  The Library has digitised newspapers prior to 1954 on the understanding that they are out of copyright. It is a good idea to credit your source of the images as the National Library of Australia and to use the persistent identifier for the article as your link. The stable persistent identifier is located on the left side of the page under ‘cite this’. (e.g. Cite: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12062558) The url should not be used as the link since this is not stable.

How can I print an article without the pink highlighting box appearing?

The pink highlights appear because you have done a keyword search for the article.  If you note down the citation and go back to the article by browsing, or if you paste the 'cite this' link in the url and refresh, the article should appear without any highlights and then you can print it without the pink appearing.

Can you remove an article about my family member please?

The Library is not reviewing or censoring articles that were originally published and made publically available in Australian newspapers. We are not responsible for the content of the published material and as with all material collected for the library collection, we take a neutral position in respect to the content. The Library is unwilling to remove any content or individual articles from the Australian Newspapers Service. The exception to this however would be if there was legal evidence or substantiation that the statements were false or defamatory in nature for example in the instance of an individual having won a defamation case against the original newspaper publisher. We appreciate that some people are finding surprising information out about their relatives which is sometimes good and sometimes bad, and may either elate or upset the relatives concerned.

 

Last updated Thursday 12-Nov-2009