Full-text searches now possible in digitized newspapers on Quebec Archives’ website

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) announced this week that all of its 414 digitized newspapers are now full-text searchable.

At the beginning of 2018, BAnQ embarked on a major upgrade project to make it possible to conduct full-text searches in all of the newspapers that are available in its digital collection. To do this, it was necessary to (re-)process 114 newspapers that had been digitized several years ago with less-advanced technology and lower standards.

Now that character recognition has been much improved in BAnQ’s newspaper collection, it is possible to more easily find articles that may have previously escaped the search engine.

For example, a search for my elusive relative, “Alexander B Young,” uncovered a short article about aggravated assaults in an 1878 issue of the Montreal Herald and Daily Commercial Gazette. Until this week, this article had been as elusive to me as my relative.

While the article didn’t help me break down any brick walls, it has made me curious about why someone would punch Alexander “senseless to the ground.”

Majority of newspapers in French
In BAnQ’s digitzed newspaper collection, there are 347 publications in French, 60 in English, and one each in Inuit, Greek, Italian, and Russian.

Of the newspapers in English, 57 were published province-wide, 35 in Montreal and area, 15 in Quebec City, four in Sherbrooke, and one in the Laurentians.

The Montreal Gazette is, unfortunately, not part of the collection, but BAnQ does plan to digitze issues of the Montreal Star that are no longer protected by copyright.

The newspapers can be consulted in BAnQ’s Numérique (digitized) section.

Tips
Full-text search
Before entering a keyword or keywords in the search box next to the magnifying glass at the top-right of the digitized newspapers page, unclick “non” under Texte intégral (full-text search) in the panel on the right.

Set parameters for the date
If a search produces an overwhelming number of results, select Date in the right panel and enter a beginning year and an end year in the boxes with four As, which represent Année (year). Enter the first year after De (from) and the end year after À (to).

Choose a location
Another way to narrow down the results is to select the Lieu representé (location represented) field and then select one or more locations. Keep in mind, however, that an article about a Quebec City-based ancestor could appear in a Montreal newspaper, so you may not want to restrict the search to a particular city.

Selecting a language may help
Only interested in English-language newspapers? Then select Anglais (English) under the Langue (language) filter in the right panel. Once you’ve looked at all the English results, you may want to look at French-language newspapers. I found the coroner’s report about the death of my Scottish great-great-grandfather in Montreal’s La Presse newspaper. I found the article by searching for his first and last name. (Later I ordered the coroner’s report from BAnQ for a few dollars.)

Click for more results
Finally, make sure to click Afficher plus de résultats (display more results) at the bottom of your results to reveal even more.

Learn more on how to search BAnQ’s online newspaper collection in the blog post, How to search Quebec Archives’ historical newspaper collection online.

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