Newspaper miscellany : Old wine in new bottles: historic newspapers online. Paper for newspapers conference Paris April 2012.

Old wine in new bottles: historic newspapers online

@05012012 old wine in new bottles

Veille vin dans des nouveaux bouteilles

Paper for newspapers conference Paris April 2012.

[Placed in my blog, March2026, as an act of vanity...]

Introduction

[slide of geo tag map] We have witnessed an extraordinary phenomenon in the last ten years. This is the incredibly rapid scanning of millions of printed documents and their availability via databases for users all over the world. The sheer number and variety of what is now offered is probably beyond the comprehension of any one individual. There is simply an incredible amount of information relating to older printed texts online. You as delegates who are attending this Newspaper conference are as aware as anybody how many texts of older newspapers have now been placed online. What is striking about this worldwide process of newspaper back run digitisation is the re-assertion of the need to present the whole text of newspapers, as originally published, to online users. So, we have old wine (the original newspapers), now placed into new bottles (the online environment). Of course, the big difference for users now is that many of the scanned newspaper texts have been converted via optical character recognition, so that text searching may be done by users. This has been stated by many others to be transformative for research, and I believe this still to be the case. Researchers now have the ability to search rapidly and purposefully to compare newspaper reports, opinion and evidence remotely on a computer. There is far less need for researchers to travel to the library of the archive that holds the original texts.

There is the need to respect the integrity of the original as originally created and published. We need to remind new audiences of how and why newspapers have been published over time; the social and historical context of their publication. And also continue to encourage the viewing of newspaper articles and snippets in context of the whole page or the whole issue, as originally published. The original entity is the issue. So this is the “old wine”.

The transformation in researchers’ ability to compare and to interpret newspaper texts, via online sources is itself a huge change. This can be done without too much difficulty online now, after some 10 years of worldwide effort in scanning and post-processing of old newspaper pages. I shall be offering a few case studies later in this paper. The difficulty now is dealing with digital excess, and working out precisely what we want to find from within the large quantities of results that emanate from a wide search ,as part of a directed, thought out research event or item.

The examples being described next are mostly the means to an end, rather than the end of itself.

It is worth emphasising that the examples that follow are only drawn from sources or organisations that have enabled free public access to older newspaper texts. For this paper, this meant using newspapers made available by some national libraries: The Library of Congress,[i] The National Library of Australia[ii], the Bibliotheque nationale de France[iii]. Google Newspapers archive is also available free.[iv] There are considerable resources available from commercial companies also for historical newspaper research online, for example ProQuest Historical Newspapers[v]; Gale 19^th Century newspapers[vi]; Readex historical newspapers[vii]; Newsarchive[viii]

It is the original texts that are being presented and studying them in context remains as important as ever. The study of how and why information is presented on each printed page in the way that editors originally decided, is only just starting. Also, there is the possibility of comparison of newspapers with other original sources, of books, of prints, of maps, of photographs, of drawings, of paintings – all of this detailed work has barely begun. It is also a truism that some of the results could never have been secured by traditional reading of each newspaper page, looking for relevant information. Some of the results now resulting from online searches can only happen because of the whole scale indexing of older newspaper texts. The mass of texts available shows that information about events or people is only available in newspapers, often local ones in the country of origin. The means to search online and the relative ease with which researchers can accomplish this, are now realities.

A few of worked examples show how much the telegraph and cables linking countries, with consequent developments in communications, influenced reports printed in newspapers, especially from the 1850s onwards.

[American civil war – loss of the Sultana]

[slide] In the vastness of the American Civil War, occupying as it did three and a half years over a huge area of the United States, one incident will suffice to illustrate the potency of online searching. The loss of the steamboat, the Sultana in 1865 resonated across America. The SS Sultana was a Mississippi River steamboat paddle wheeler whose destruction in an explosion on April 27, 1865 was possibly the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. An estimated 1,800 of the Sultana's 2,400 passengers were killed when three of the ship's four boilers exploded and the Sultana sank near Memphis, Tennessee.[ix] Most of those on board were exchanged prisoners of war on their way home after privation and suffering from one to twenty-three months in Cahaba and Andersonville prisons.

[slide Sheffield Independent 11 may 1865] The UK press picked up the story; no less than 73 articles appeared in UK London and Regional newspapers in the month of May 1865.[x] Of these, three appeared as early as the 11 May, when the Sheffield Independent reproduced a telegram sent to The Times. [slide of Fife Herald ] More details were available after another week, by the 18 May 1865. The account drawn from the Memphis Bulletin and printed in the Fife Herald, gives readers much more information about the nature of the incident, of the number of victims, and mention of how the rescue was conducted. [slide of Nashville Daily Times] Looking at the Chronicling America titles, we have a brief headline in the Nashville Daily Times, of the 29 April 1865 which simply prints two headlines: “Steamer Sultana Burned. Great Loss of Life.” (such is the juxtaposition of different subjects within newspapers, we have this announcement in the midst of many commercial advertisements.) Newspapers in Australia picked up on the story as well. The NLA website has two newspapers which printed the story by July 1865. Gippsland Times (Victoria) carried the story in its issue of Sat 22 July 1865. The Empire (Sydney) printed the story on Wednesday 26 July 1865 p 2. Perhaps one of the first analyses that a researcher can carry out is the differences between each of these reports; and also to identify the common source of the information, and what the original source printed in the first instance of reporting the story.

[slide of The Leavenworth weekly times[ My second case explores the use of maps. Newspapers printed many maps during the 19^th century. The Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war attracted much newspaper coverage. As the Prussian armies moved into the interior of France, it became clear that Paris would need to defend itself. The Prussian army invested Paris between the 15-19 September 1870. The Leavenworth Weekly Times printed a map of the fortifications of Paris in its edition of 29 September 1870.[xi] This is very detailed and is accompanied by a large article describing the layout in details. As we view it today, the centre looks over-inked, but the roads of the periphery are well delineated. [slide] On Saturday 29 October 1870, page 24, the Australian Town and Country Journal (NSW) printed The Fortifications of Paris. [xii] This is more of an overview of the area around the city, with the fortifications themselves shown only in outline. [slide] In the UK, the Western Times published this map of Paris and its fortifications on the 3 January 1871.[xiii] This is a carefully crafted map, with many locations named and the road system clearly outlined.

Perhaps of particular interest to the researcher are the differences in presentation resulting from editorial choice at the time, this may have been linked to the limitations of what could actually be engraved for mass reproduction in each particular newspaper.

[slide Washington Times ] Another example is the closure of the steel works resulting from a demand for higher wages and consequent riot, that occurred in Chicago in 1895. [slide ]The Washington Times reported the event on May 8, 1895; [slide] the Standard of London reported the event on the 10 May 1895.

[slide Aurore] In France, the Dreyfus affair was an international event in the 1890s and early 1900s. Emile Zola’s letter to the President of the French Republic, a dramatic accusation, was the front page banner headline in L’Aurore of 13 January 1898 (no.87).[xiv] [slide] On the same day, the UK regional daily, the North-Eastern Gazette ran the story with the headline: “M. Zola and the Drefus Case.” The first sentence reads: “ M. Zola, in the promised letter on the Dreyfus Case, published in Paris today, says the affair is a stain and a blot on the President’s term of office.” [slide] Only a day later, the 14 January, The Huddersfield Daily Chronicle runs the story with the bye-line: “ Allegations against French generals”. [slide] A search of the Chronicling America website under the term “Dreyfus Zola” (for all of the United States) yields 181 results for further scrutiny. This is a striking example of the kind of excess that researchers now face. [slide] Only three days later after the publication of Zola’s letter in L’Aurore, The Washington Times of the 16 January 1898 offers the headline: ”Is All France Insane?” with the bye-line: “Unreasoning passion controls the Dreyfus Agitation”. [slide] The Kansas City Journal of 18 January 1898 offers its readers a report of the events in Paris. [slide] The Standard of London the 19 January 1989 runs the story about how the Cabinet Council of France might take out a libel case against Zola; it also mentions the rioting that continues to take place.

[slide] Australian newspapers reported extensively on the affair, with a search of the words: “Zola Dreyfus” yielding 2,023 results for further scrutiny. [slide] A refinement of the search to article printed in January 1898 gives 118 results. [slide] The South Australian Register , Saturday 15 January 1898 carried the story on page 5. [Slide] Interestingly, links are being made to other resources available on the web as you can see from the left hand side of this screen shot. [slide] Commentary in Spanish newspapers was also extensive as we can see here in La Lectura Dominical of 27 February 1898.[xv] As we can glimpse, the coverage of this sort of event was very great, so early refinement of online searches will yield fewer results, this enabling thinking more relevant to the needs of the researcher.

Conclusions

The work of deepening and intensifying the numbers of older newspapers online will continue. Within ten more years, we can expect to see much larger quantities of newspapers available online, from many more countries. There will be a more pressing need for our community of librarians and archivists to aggregate this information about all of them and to ensure that these listings remain available to all. At the same time, improvements to optical character recognition will be made, making researcher satisfaction all the greater. How to combine publicly available databases with those only available via charging will remain an area for further discussion. Here, it has to be said that the price of entry to view commercially available databases will continue to lower over time, so this may not prove a barrier to use that it is perceived to be today.

[slide of research] The end of research enquiries will be anything that the researcher wants it to be, for example:

- Newspapers can be primary or secondary sources of information

- the pure enjoyment of finding fascinating information

- newspaper articles found which focus upon a particular historical subject, or person, or political movement

- articles found which show the number of reports about a particular incident

- articles found which offer information and commentary upon social conditions (e.g. disease, or housing)

- articles found which permit the analysis of language itself in different countries, when describing the same event

To deal with the problem of sifting large masses of information, text mining techniques are being developed.[xvi] Semantic analysis for linguistics is now present.[xvii] Both areas of activity will attract adherents, and many will spend much time focusing upon the means of attaining a summation of information using computers. The results of such work may or not may be successful, and may or may not lead to useful research within the arts and humanities. At this time, I prefer to place trust in the diligence of the human mind and spirit (rather than in computer programs), in the ability of the mind to grasp the mass and complexity that results from massive amounts of information. Distillation of large quantities of textual information will be done by individuals or by teams of researchers, who combine knowledge of languages with knowledge of history, of literature, and of any other subject, to achieve readable summaries about a person, a subject or about events, from which we all benefit. This ability to synthesise and summarise will continue to benefit us all. The availability of vast amounts of texts (in this case from older newspapers) makes the journey more daunting, but hopefully more rewarding for those who undertake the challenge of research.

The last word on all of this – there isn’t one!

Edmund M B King

British Library

March 2012

[i] Chronicling America: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

[ii] Trove. Digitised newspapers and more. http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper

[iii] Bibliotheque national de France: http://www.bnf.fr/fr/collections_et_services/presse/s.presse_numerisee.html?first_Art=non

[iv] Google newspapers: http://news.google.com/newspapers

[v] Proquest Historical newspapers: http://www.proquest.co.uk/en-UK/catalogs/databases/detail/pq-hist-news.shtml

[vi] Gale Cengage. 19^th century US newspapers. http://mlr.com/DigitalCollections/products/usnewspapers/

[vii] Readex. America’s historical newspapers: http://www.newsbank.com/readex/?content=96 ; African American newspapers: http://www.readex.com/readex/product.cfm?product=308 ;

[viii] Newsarchive: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/defaultv11.aspx

[ix] Text from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sultana

[x] Figures taken from the British Newspaper Archive. http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

Searched 21.12.2011.

[xi] The Leavenworth Weekly Times , 29 September 1870 image 1. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84027691/1870-09-29/ed-1/seq-1/;words=Paris+PARIS+FORTIFICATIONS+fortifications?date1=1870&rows=20&searchType=basic&state=&date2=1871&proxtext=paris+fortifications&y=18&x=9&dateFilterType=yearRange&index=2

[xii] Saturday 29 October 1870, page 24, the Australian Town and Country Journal (NSW) printed The Fortifications of Paris. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/70462750?searchTerm=paris fortifications&searchLimits=l-decade=187|||l-year=1870|||l-monthInYear=October%7CmonthInYear%3A10 Searched 21.12.2011.