Archiving: Newspapers.com

Saving stories to archive

The Museum keeps a Newspapers.com account for Museum Library research use. Key articles should be saved, downloaded, and added to relevant Omeka entries. These instructions explain how to do that. There are a few different ways to do this in Newspapers.com, but please follow this process:

• Log in to Newspapers.com with the Museum account. If you do not know the login credentials, ask the director.
• When you find an article worth keeping (see the tips below), go to the Clip button in the top right toolbar.
• A box will appear over the page. Drag the box over your story; drag the corners to adjust its size.
• Take care to get as "clean" of a selection as possible; make sure the article is completely selected with none cut off, while eliminating all side columns or those above/below. Ideally, your selection will contain the entirety of the story with nothing else visible.
  • Many old newspapers would vertical lines between columns and use a horizontal line or other visual indicator between stories to indicate where they start and stop. Include these in your selection if they exist: they provide context of start and finish.
• Do NOT add a title or anything else here; click Save in the right sidebar. The clipping is now saved to the Museum account. At this screen, follow the next steps to download the story and add it to Omeka.

Adding a saved story to Omeka

• With the clipped story saved and open on the screen, click on the Print/Download button in the top right corner.
• Click the "Save as JPG" button. (Note: we do not use the "Save as PDF" function because it downloads a very small, low-resolution copy of the clip embedded in a much larger page of white space. The JPG will download in the highest resolution available.)
• The file will download to the computer you are working on, probably in a Downloads folder.
• In Finder (Mac) or File Explorer (PC), find the file. You will see that it is automatically given a file name that includes the newspaper, date, and page; this is critical source information and should be kept. However, it is helpful if you edit the file name:
  • Keep the original name at the beginning
  • After the original name, add a hyphen, then...
  • ...add a few words that describe the subject of the story.
  • For example, this story saved with the name "The_Greenville_News_1900_06_24_Page_1.jpg." Edit it to be "The_Greenville_News_1900_06_24_Page_1 - Isham Mayfield appointed postmaster.jpg."
• Now go to Omeka, find the related record (e.g., the entry for Isham Mayfield), and open the record for editing.
• Click on the Media tab at the top.
• In the right "Add Media" column, click on Upload.
• An upload entry will appear in the middle. In the Title field, provide the same subject line (e.g., "Isham Mayfield Appointed Postmaster").
• Click "Choose File." Select your file, and click Open.
• Click "Save."

Searching Newspapers.com

Searching and finding things on Newspapers.com is a bit of a skill. While this isn't a full tutorial on successful search, these tips might be helpful:

• Put search terms in quotation marks to narrow results to the exact phrase. For example, the search term Mayor Keating architect will find newspaper pages that have all three words anywhere on the page; but "Mayor Keating" architect will only find pages that have the exact phrase "Mayor Keating," with the word "architect" also appearing on the page.
• Add a date range to narrow down results. That can be exact dates, or it can just be a range of years (e.g., 1876-1899).
• Add the location of "South Carolina" to narrow it down even farther.
• Once you've done that search, you now have the ability to narrow it down to a specific newspaper; it is often helpful to limit results to Greenville papers.