Note: The hyperlink below to the newspaper collection is not “sticking.” It’s going instead to a general section. I am trying to find a better way to share it. If I can’t, I’ll write a short blog post on how to find the collection.
After learning the news that Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) has improved the character recognition in its digitized newspaper collection, you may want to look for relatives.
Navigating the search engine and finding relevant articles can be made easier if your follow a few easy steps.
Keyword search
Enter a keyword or family name in the search box to the left of the magnifying glass at the top of the page. Quotation marks are not needed. When looking for a surname that may be a common word, such as Young, capitalize it. That should exclude the lower case word, young, from the results.
If the number of results is overwhelming, read the tips in yesterday’s blog post, Full-text searches now possible in digitized newspapers on Quebec Archives’ website, to limit the results by date, location, and language.
Once you find an article that interests you, click on the title to open the newspaper.
To see more search results, click on Afficher plus de résultats at the bottom of the page.
Search within an issue
Once the newspaper issue is open on the first page, you can scroll through the pages looking for the highlighted keywords — or you can save a bundle of time and use the search engine within the publication. Simply click on the small magnifying glass under the newspaper title.
When you click on the small magnifying glass, a drop-down bar will appear, revealing your search term and three options.
You can select one option, such as Tout surligner (highlight all keywords), or all three options. Recherche par phrase (search by phrase) will look for the keywords in order. Selecting Respecter la casse (case sensitive) will look only for the keyword as you have entered it, such as Young, not young.
At the end of the bar you will see a number in a box. The number indicates how many times your search term appears in the issue.
Click on the arrows next to the keyword to move forward to each keyword highlighted in the newspaper and backward.
How to save
You can save the entire issue as a PDF by clicking on the Télécharger (download) button on the top right.
Unfortunately, BAnQ doesn’t have a website tool that makes it possible to save just an article.
If you want to save an article and you use Microsoft on a PC computer, install the Snip & Sketch tool, which is free. I keep it on my tool bar and use it almost every day.
