Historic Language and Historic Newspapers: Strategies for Breaking the Language Barrier Christopher Cronin, University of Colorado at Boulder Martha Hanscom,

Historic Language and Historic Newspapers: Strategies for Breaking the Language Barrier

Christopher Cronin, University of Colorado at BoulderMartha Hanscom, University of WyomingNancy Chaffin, Colorado State University

Colorado Association of Libraries ConferenceNovember 11, 2005

Collaborative Digitization Programwww.cdpheritage.org

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Agenda

Introduction to the collection Issues around using historical newspapers General search strategies Keyword searching Stop List Searching broad and narrow topics

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Colorado’s Historic Newspaper Collection http://www.cdpheritage.org/collection/chnc.cfm Collaborative project between the CDP,

Colorado State Library, and Colorado Historical Society Library Services & Technology Act

(LSTA)/Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to digitize the microfilm of Colorado newspapers

Started with 48 newspapers from 1859-1880, but grew to 85 newspapers though the year 1923

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Using Historic Newspapers

Technological: Optical Character Recognition (OCR)Accuracy is dependent on the quality of the

microfilm, and quality of the original when it was microfilmed

Cultural: changes in publishing practices, journalistic practice, and language usage.

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Differences in Journalistic Practice

Shorter articles Mixture of fact and opinion Variant language usage: from obsolete and archaic to

derogatory and offensive Additional resources:

Newspapers by Anne Rubenstein, on the Center for History and New Media web site (George Mason University). Available: http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/unpacking/newsmain.html

Uncovering our history: teaching with primary sources by Susan H. Veccia (American Library Association, 2004)

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General Search Strategies – 1

Broad topics: if you’re interested in transportation, search for specific modes of transportRailroads, stage coach, horses, wagons,

automobiles Even more specific: names of transportation

companies like Union Pacific, or Ford and Buick

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General Search Strategies – 2

Limit searches for common terms to specific dates or newspapers

Be creative when searching for geographic areas

Broaden and narrow searches appropriately based on results: if a newspaper doesn’t list “Ford”, search under “cars” or automobiles”

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Keyword Searching

See pages 3-5 of the Searching Colorado’s Historic Newspaper Collection handout Connectors: and, or, not Phrase: quotation marks (plus connectors if needed) Only case-sensitive when an initial capital is used Truncation/wildcard: asterisk (*) Punctuation: do not use apostrophes (’) Spelling: be aware of alternate spellings Abbreviations: be aware of different practices in abbreviations

(e.g., Wm. for William)

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Stop List

Do not search with common words: a, an, at, the

Words that are too common will generate an error message:

“The following errors occurred: The query string is empty. The following words are very common and were not included in your search: [term]”

Use asterisks creatively: “Gre* War”

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Searching for a broad topic – Immigration

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Strategy

Choose a topic Read secondary sources Use a thesaurus to find words to search

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Strategy

Break up topic into smaller elements Search one aspect

Examples: Education or language Limit search by date range or geographic

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Strategy

Use wild cards (*)*migration or immigra*

Combine terms Immigrants and literate

Try alternate spellingsTheater or theatre

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Strategy

Test the search strategy See what results you get Get ideas for other search termsRefine the search

Try the search again

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Searching Colorado’s Historic Newspaper Collection

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Examples of search results

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Colorado’s Historic Newspapers Collection:

Germans from Russia:

Searching for a specific immigrant group

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Searching strategies: Background information Dates

CHNC: 1859-1923 Germans from Russia: 1885-1924

Terminology Volga Germans Russians Black Sea Germans

Specific locations Globeville Larimer, Weld, Morgan, Logan Counties (South Platte watershed) Pueblo

Source: Rock, Kenneth W., “Unsere Leute:” The Germans from Russia in Colorado. Colorado History Magazine, v. 54, no. 2 (1977) pp 154-183.

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Questions?

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Conclusion

Historic Language and Historic Newspapers: Strategies for Breaking the Language Barrier Christopher Cronin, University of Colorado at Boulder Martha Hanscom,

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collaborative project

university of colorado

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colorado state library

historic language

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library services imls

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