[BCMA] On-line historical newspapers - "Paper of Record" is back Great for genealogy and other research

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.]

Paper of Record is a wonderful "primary source" site on the Internet,
one created by Canadians. It has digital scans of microfilm of many old
newspapers and they claim to have 21 million images. You have to join,
but, it is FREE!

 

Sadly it disappeared a couple of years ago and the word was out that
Google had bought it although nothing else appeared to replace it.
Special thanks to Archie Miller of New Westminster who discovered that
the paper of Record web site was up and running again, albeit slightly
changed. 

 

The old version was a bit better. It used to highlight the search word
in yellow wherever it was found. This made it very easy to find on a
newspaper page. I have also noticed that the "Find" command does not
work once you are on a page view. The bottom line is that you need to
read the whole page, but you can zoom in to make this easier.   At least
you know how many "hits" are on that particular page. 

 

Here are the contents for British Columbia

 British Columbia

      British Columbian
<http://www.paperofrecord.com/search_paper.asp?PaperId=307>   

New Westminster  

1861 - 1869

3,446

				
      New Westminster Mainland Guardian
<http://www.paperofrecord.com/search_paper.asp?PaperId=315>   

New Westminster  

1870 - 1889

7,695

 

 

Once you find an article, you can click and drag to highlight it. (If it
is a very long article I will do it in sections to fit on an 8-1/2 x 11"
page) then copy it (Press and hold CTRL , then while still holding it,
click C) Then open a Microsoft Word (or other word-processor) document
and paste it in (CTRL + V). Then go back and copy the newspaper issue
date page info as shown below. 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, January 16, 1862 
 The British Columbian 

 

Remember that it will not find EVERY mention of a word. Sometimes this
is be-

cause the word is hyph-

enated or the Optical Character Recognition could not decypher the word.
Remember that spelling varied and not just between Americans and
British. Here is how they explained it:

"Please note: Due to the varying quality of the newspapers included in
the archive at the time of microfilming (many over 100 years old!),
character abnormalities, misspellings and abbreviations in the original
text, not every incidence of a specific key word, or phrase can be
found."

 

If you search for a famous person like "Colonel Moody" in The British
Columbian, there are 104 "hits". A lot of newspaper mentions it will
find are of the ship "Colonel Moody" entering and leaving the Port of
New Westminster rather than the man himself. 

 

 

To register, go to http://www.paperofrecord.com/register.asp 

To access Paper of Record in the future, go to 
www.paperofrecord/default.asp  and add it to your favourites.  The
"/default.asp" suffix is essential.  This is the home page.
Surprisingly,  www.paperofrecord.com is a dead end canyon as there are
no links to the rest of the web site, nor any means of joining.

. 

 

Remember that you can check for ancestors and famous (or infamous)
characters outside of BC as well. 

 

Have fun!

                

Colin MacGregor Stevens,

Manager,

New Westminster Museum and Archives,

302 Royal Avenue,

New Westminster, BC, 

V3L 1H7

 

Phone Office:    604-527-4639

Work Cellular : 604-830-6965

Fax:                  604-527-4641

E-mail: cstevens at newwestcity.ca <mailto:cstevens at newwestcity.ca>  

Web Site: www.newwestminster.ca <http://www.newwestminster.ca>  

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