The New York State Historic Newspapers website recently underwent a major overhaul. Here are some of the changes to look for.
First, the website is able to return search results at a much faster speed. And, with the new website platform, more than 1 million pages were able to be added during the upgrade.
The map of New York State is now much more colorful and there are tabs across the top of the home page for Titles, Dates, Counties, Collections and Help.
The advanced search page is laid out differently. You get a snippet view of the results of a search with your search term highlighted. Also you are able to limit the search results by text or images.
The search results are shown as a filmstrip so it is easy to go to the page before or the page after in the newspaper.
Now when you conduct a search you can now use quote marks for an exact search, use Boolean searching and wildcards.
A new feature is a user account. When you are logged into your account, you can view recent searches, create private lists of search results and email the results to yourself. You can also download a PDF of a page. A text correction feature will be coming but will only be allowed if you have a user account.
Two videos on YouTube.com explain the recent changes:
Reintroduction to New York State Historic Newspapers at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp_TVCxgLt4
New Search Tools for New York State Historic Newspapers at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4amIpgVczmQ
Check out our links to other historic newspaper sites at: https://www.newyorkgenlinks.com/newspapers-and-obituaries/
