Free access to newpapers.com for mother's day (and Do Over)

A limited time offer for newspapers.com was publicized from https://genealogybargains.com/ and its related facebook page.

Do Over

Let me backtrack a moment. I had found a cheat sheet for citations that cited the page above. As I had recently "started over" digitally, trying to record sources this time, I found myself intrigued by https://genealogybargains.com/genealogy-do-over-start-here/

I hoped to gain some insight from a professional that actually gave some thought to the subject. It describes 12 steps (and suggests you take a week for each). It had a facebook group. The reason I go through this is to get to my new acronym, BSO. Please bear with my notes and introspection.

The sections immediately below are based on series of facebook posts as I started going through the material. Like most things genealogy, they are a work in progress. Watch upcoming blogs.

Golden rules:

I've been working on citing my sources. I see I can do better with dates of my efforts.

This is not the first time I have considered a research log, but that has not happened in a useful fashion. I started my blog to capture process questions and decisions for myself and share the links with others to avoid retyping. Good thing, as I have not gotten much feedback.

Did not drill down into the longer lists of golden rules provided.

Step one:

"Setting Previous Research Aside: ... Then locate essential documents that prove a relationship and either set them aside for future review or create an index"

I've been debating how to index documents. (Very few are primary proof.) For the moment I have started adding a list of documents to a packet as I go through it. I started to go of on about specific documents and degrees off proof, but decided this mention was enough for here and now. There is also the issue of how to share these manuscripts with the family in a secure manner. Is my source list sufficient? Should or create an archive? LibraryThings? zotero (thanks Pam)? yale?

"Preparing to Research: Make a list of you current research habits including when you research, the processes you use, etc. Review your list and determine if there are areas you would like to improve."

My first thought is I have no process, but clearly I build the tree in the software de año. Recently I have been trying to capture source/citation information. For online information it includes link, source text, and citation if given. It needs to include date as it may change. For paper I am starting to transcribe relevant bits to make it obvious.

Oh, no. For this project I was inconsistant: I copied the paper, location, date, and page into Publisher - adding a comma and space after the paper and before the date. Little things that become annoying. It felt like a hint towards a citation rather then a properly formated citation of some style. Wish the dates were sortable. For that matter I am struggling with where to link them into the tree. Some are tied to notible event. but some are not.

step 2:

process - this is something my background often has me looking at. This blog has definitely touched on it.

goals - What a mess. I try to touch of some of these in my blog todo's.

There are definitely some long standing family puzzles too. Recently I have been frustrated in printing out recent work in a way that supports analyzing.

step 4:

research - a pity I had not gotten to this yet.

resources:

Bright Shiny Object (BSO)

Was I supposed to have a research goal? Was I supposed to start with my immediate and most known family members? Looking into my mom for Mother's Day does seem to fit in to a suggested strategy. Was it really what I was Focusing on? No. I had started with answering a query on familysearch and working on related documents. FamilySearch's privacy policy had me looking for proof of death. (Wouldn't be nice if a document showed the results?) Started going through branches in dad's collection and trying to match them with familysearch. Responded to births and deaths and poked at some of the neglect since dad's death. Here I am going off in another direction because of the time limit.

Not content with the current goal. I thought to apply it to other family members if I have time. Snort. I got to dad. They had interactions with others in the family, like my siblings, and theirs.

Newspapers.com

Finally I get to the main point of this post. I had already cited some things from this website. For this endeaver I actually configured a login and used thier new search function. Newpapers.com has search capabilities on criteria like first name, maiden name, married name, lifespan, location. It changed the name to "first maiden" or "first married". I only found Mrs dad last when I went looking for dad.

Initial search gave me 400+ entries. Filtered on state to narrow (Found out there is at least one person sharing mom's maiden name in the state she spent most of her life in.) Clicking on several states was a nice interface. Some are duplicates or similar in different papers or alternate editions. Will I regret not capturing an exhaustive list? Dances and summer camp make amusing reads, but I am not sure they are relevant.

I struggle to revisit the search results for what I have not seen and captured/eliminated, I have separated first, maiden, birth-married and first, married, married-died. I also found ordering by date instead of relevance better. Found my grandma coming home with my mom (and great grandma visiting.) Are we back to that lack of research log (driven by not wanting to capture similar information a third time)? Using the slider to eliminate dates already perused.

It is possible to save pages or parts of pages, as either jpgs or pdfs, which will be downloaded to the computer. The jpg is what you'd want to include in another document. The pdfs are great for capturing context and throwing in a file for later. Should I have captured jpgs of just the picures or is cropping them later a sufficient strategy? At some point I got picky about doing this for articles with pictures, hoping I can come back later. The file names include a paper and a date format that does not sort alphabetically.

I am reminded I have not recently focussed on a media strategy.

The tool saves recent searches and, upon request, clips. The clips provide the newspaper, location, date, and page in an easily copied form. You may also configure a description - who and what is of interest to you.

There is also an option for OCR (optical character recognition)! The OCR works better than many -- on a single column. If I was in any doubt of capturing colums separately, it evaporated when I found an article that spanned pages - that article was going to be multiple clippings.

Have clipped two versions of an article the first column and the whole thing. I have not figured out how to clean up: I have an entry with a poor frame that I would like to delete too.

Now that the free access has expired, I seem to be able to see my clips but not my searches. I can still edit the clips description to include a name and event. I can also navigate from the clip to the page to save and print. I regret not clipping some of the trivial aspects I read about. At 100+ clippings being able to use the browse to search the clipping descriptions useful.

Note - this site, like most, is subject to change. Clearly they are in the process of changing thier search interface, with a link back to the old. The pay for notification implies the collection is expanding. If it is important to you, make a copy. I may be obsolete. As media still does nto slide well accross tools (and are big files). I tend to save transcriptions.

GRAMPS

So I am following something similar to my recent process.

Capture the source first:

The title taken from the article, rarely mentions the person. Maybe I need to start tagging event types and such. Seemed redundant with earlier posts.
Put the URL in a note of type of link.
Transcribe the article into a note of type source text.
I am putting the paper/place/date/page under Source > Publisher rather than under a note of type citation. I felt like it was not a recognized standard. Will I regret the inconstancy? Little things that become annoying: adding a comma and space after the paper and before the date.
Reference the source from person
Should exit gramps periodically to get a backup.

Currently the person record feels like a dumping ground. What are the right places for references? clearly some accociate with an event. Once again I am going against a do over recomendation: Do it once fully and correctly.

I suspect how to enter the data ties to getting it back out. Within GRAMPS, the complete individual report (named differently than the detailed reports pulling in sources) gives tree information and the associated sources. After a day of adding sources I have nine in the new newspaper repository. The report is 17 pages long with 18 sources and no media yet. That is longer than I hoped for. (How hard would it be to reduce to font on the sources? The choir members are in a smaller font. Do I need to twiddle fonts in each note? Is there really that much difference between 8 and 10?) The source text from OCR was one big block. I added returns and indents to reflect paragraphs. These seem to wrap nicely to adjust to the display width. Some of the bits I had entered entered with line breaks and checked preformatting. That makes sense for tabular data (pity it is too wide), but should probably revisit text. Words split across lines are not consistent. As I remember, I have not picked my tools based on publishing information. :(

Obviously I am weak about responding to my hourly reminder to move. Not sure how long it takes me to do an article. 111 articles/4 days/~8 hours 20 minutes. And after a long day and a morning, my resolve faltered. The third morning, I picked up and was rewarded with my grandmothers obituary. After so much attention to obituaries this spring, I wish I had a clear list of those still missing.

Another process experiment: This blog entry is being written in a TODO note attached to the newpaper repository. This seems more findable than a random file in notepad.

Until now most of my obituaries have been in the repository legecy. I think it is now time to look at making it easier to find them. Tags?

TO DO

do over document - read and incorporate
books from Monroe library on "Arbor Day" - read and return
write death research report: person, birth, death, ssdi, obituary, findagrave
change children of notes to font size 9
write children of report? vs descendant outline?
link articles to tree (NEW)

with education and occupation information - more growth
non primary people - especially since mom's name is often not in title

publisher vs citation note (NEW?)
share articles (NEW)? familysearch, wikitree, complete individual report
Add other newspaper links to repository.
Add media to gramps?
Use tags (NEW)? birth graduation marriage obituary...

Search This Blog

Genealogy