Searching
How do I search?
Users can currently search the UKPressOnline database for pages of The Church Times, Daily Worker, Morning Star, Daily Star, The Watchman (1835-1885), Daily Express from 1900, Sunday Express from 2000, Action, Blackshirt, Fascist Week, and the WWII editions of the Yorkshire Post (subject to Subscription limitations). Personal users can also search the Daily Mirror from 1904 to present.
Type a search term (e.g. Blair) into the Search box on the Home page and the database will tell you how many pages there are on which this term was mentioned and show you thumbnail results. You may also search for newspapers from a date: enter the date into the 'Simple date search' box to see what we have.
Note that, if you search for Blair, you'll find Sir Ian Blair, Lionel Blair and The Blair Witch Project, as well as Tony Blair; if you want only the ex-Prime Minister, your search term should be: Exact Phrase Tony Blair. If you are not a registered user with UKPressOnline or haven't logged in with your Username and Password, you can see only the thumbnails. If you want to see more, see Preview pages and scroll through editions, or create your own Bookshelf - you have to Register and logon. To Download/use full PDF pages you'll need to purchase access.
How do I narrow my results?
If you search for Tony Blair, the database can find all pages on which the Exact Phrase Tony Blair is mentioned; it will ignore any mentions where the writer may have referred to the ex-Prime Minister (albeit disparagingly, perhaps) as simply Blair. Select Any Word to find results which contain Tony or Blair. Using the advanced search screen there is the option to add extra search criteria - e.g. Tony Blair and George Bush and Jack Straw and Iraq; this will return only pages that mention all of these names. Each of the added search boxes further gives the option to amend its Boolean operative - and, or and not so, if you want every page that mentions Blair or Bush, Search for Tony Blair, change the drop-down operative from and to or, and type in George Bush. If you want only those Tony Blair pages that have nothing to do with George Bush, change the operative to not. You can use any combination of these; if you find you need more criteria, please let us know.
I only want to search front pages?
The database defaults search in to Body Content - i.e. search all pages of every edition; Change this drop-down to Front Page to restrict the search to front pages only. If you're looking for David Beckham but don't want football reports, you can save a lot of time by restricting your search to front pages only. Be aware that some editions are missing the front page (occasionally we have to remove pages for legal reasons) so their editions will not show-up in your results. use the 'Next-' and 'Previous Edition' buttons in the Edition Preview View to browse through editions.
How do I search for papers from a certain date or date range?
You can opt to search for a specific date or for newspapers within a range of dates by entering the Date from and Date to fields on the advanced search screen. Dates can be entered directly as text DD/MM/YYYY (Day, Month, Year) or you can click on the calendar icon beside the date boxes to pick the date/s required from a pop-up calendar.
Note: If you simply want to find and scroll through an edition or range of editions without entering any search text click By date alone. When used in combination with setting Search in to Front page and Sort by to Oldest edition this is a powerful tool when finding coverage of major events.
How do I sort the results?
UKPressOnline defaults to returning all found pages in order of relevance - ie, pages with the most mentions of your search criteria; if you want your pages in latest to oldest date order change the Sort by drop down to most recent edition, alternatively if you want the reverse date order choose oldest edition. You may also choose to view results as a Thumbnails only, Gallery with highlighted text-in-context or list with text-in-context.
How do I search Documents offline?
Once you have downloaded the PDF files of pages, you don’t need to be connected to UKPressOnline or even to the Internet to search through them; you can use Acrobat’s Advanced ‘Search/Find’ to search the text in the document you have open – or even in all PDF files in a directory on your computer at once.
Can I set up University on- and off-campus access?
To allow automatic access to UKPressOnline we may need to set the archive to recognise your IP range when users access the website. This may be a single IP address for a proxy server or may be a series of IP addresses/ranges.
Off-campus access can be provided to your authenticated users via a link on your e-resources/library page. Off-campus access options include a proxy connection, UK Federated access (such as Athens and Shibboleth) as well as WAYFless URLs.
Results
What controls are available on the search results page?
The first line on this page tells you how many hits your search has found - how many pages on which your search criteria appear. If this is too many (e.g. a search for Tony Blair and no other criteria will find thousands of hits, which will take an awful lot of your time to go through), you can click New/Refine Search, which will take you back to the search screen you last left, where you can refine your search by adding extra criteria. This option is present in all following screens. The next line shows your search criteria. Hits are shown as thumbnails, usually eight per page (if you have a large screen you can see more results per page ). Navigation control icons are provided for Next, Previous, First and Last results. The Title, Date of publication and Page number of each page appears above its thumbnail. You can also view as pages of thumbnails only; a gallery with highlighted search-term text or a list with highlighted search-term text.
Below each thumbnail, there are four options:
- Preview takes you to a new view of the whole, scrollable edition in which that page appears, with the thumbnail (and its facing page) slightly enlarged (see below). Note: clicking on a thumbnail has the same effect.
- Add puts the thumbnail into My Bookshelf, with a pop-up confirmation.
- Get PDF transfers the original, full-size PDF of the page to your desktop.
- Report a bad page sends a report to us of damaged pages. We respond with an email when we've dealt with the problem.
There are also buttons to view the 'next' and 'previous' issues once you are viewing the edition preview.
What is the preview page?
This view shows the thumbnail page and its facing page (where there is one - i.e. not Front or Back page) at roughly double the size of the thumbnail; as well as this, thumbnails of all of the pages in that edition are shown in spreads down the right-hand side. You can scroll backwards or forwards through the edition by choosing Previous or Next; you can also choose to Jump to a specific spread or to Front Page or Back Page. At each stage the chosen page appears in the main view in Preview size.
By clicking on the buttons under each thumbnail you have the following options:
- Add puts the thumbnail into My Bookshelf, with a pop-up confirmation.
- Get PDF views/downloads the original, full-size PDF of the page.
- View opens up the page as a 100% JPG in a new window. Note: This is a full size picture of the page not a live-text PDF. When you are finished reading, close this window to go back to your search where you left it.
Search Result returns you to the thumbnail views, at the last set of thumbnails where you transferred to Preview.
How do I store a result for future use?
To use the Bookshelf you must have a subscription to an Archive.
Search results' thumbnails and their search context can be stored in My Bookshelf for future reference; if you log off and log back on, they will still be there.
The first line on this view shows how many pages you have on your Bookshelf. You can scroll through views of eight thumbnails (in the order in which you added them) and go to Preview, Download or New/Refine Search, as before.
You can delete thumbnails from My Bookshelf by clicking Remove under the relevant thumbnail.
Why is the image quality of some of the pages so crisp when many pages display with rough pixels?
The 'pre-computer' pages in UKPressOnline - from 1835 to 2001 - are scanned from the original paper editions or from microfilm images of the pages and have been OCR'd[1] to make the text available. These images are dependent on the quality of the original. We do have many issues of the newspapers where the quality of the original is very low but we are continuously upgrading these where possible; currently the focus of this is the Daily Express (from 1934 to 1946) where we have obtained a better quality set of microfilm.
From 2001, most (but not all) of the pages are in ‘Print' format PDF - the actual computer files from which newspaper pages are now printed: as such, they give production-quality reproduction, both on-screen and on reprint.
- [1] Optical Character Recognition
What are the advantages of using PDF files rather than picture files?
Picture files (TIFF, PICT, JPEG, GIF etc.) have no text content: a database of picture files allows you to search only by ‘keywords’ that have been applied to each picture by the database provider. We have made the entire original newspaper content fully searchable so you can search what was published, look at pages, download them and, using the power of Adobe Acrobat®, refine your searches or perform new ones – offline.
Missing Editions
It would be great if every edition of every old newspaper had been preserved, even better if they had been preserved in perfect condition.
It's worth noting that British Newspapers did not always publish on certain Christian religious holidays such as Good Friday and around Christmas (If in doubt, you can check the issue number [usually] on the front page).
Sadly, we can't always find a copy of some issues (or a run of issues). It can be frustrating to look for the Newspaper from a specific date only to find that it isn't there, so to help you identify the periods where UKPressOnline is not as complete as we would like, we will keep a list of known missing editions as up-to-date as possible. There are a number of damaged originals, however, we will continue to search for better quality originals. We have a continual audit process reviewing any missing pages/editions and we are continually adding new titles and pages to improve the quality of scans and fill in gaps where possible.
Payments
How do I activate my account?
Your account is automatically activated when you register. This gives you access to issue previews with page turning, and preview images with search term highlighting.
Using our Shop you can purchase access to one or more archive titles. This gives you enhanced access to zoomable large page images with highlighted search terms and, of course, to the high-resolution PDF files as well as extra facilities such as the Bookshelf.
How do I buy access to one or more archive titles?
To buy a subscription use the Shop. Click on the 'Shop' link at the top of the screen to go directly to the Shopping page. Once you are in the shop you will see a list of available packages with buttons representing the various subscription periods.
Make your selection(s) and click the button representing the period you desire next to the package of your choice.
If you wish to review or modify your shopping basket click 'View Basket'. If you change or delete an item in your basket, ensure you click 'Update Basket' to register your changes prior to continuing. To add packages you can return to the Shop by pressing 'Return to Shop'.
When you are satisfied that your subscription choices are correct press the 'Checkout Now' button to see a summary of your order. From here you click 'Pay Now' to begin the payment process.
Library, Education and larger Business customers should contact the Subscriptions Desk directly.
How much does public access cost?
To see all of the available pricing options check out the Shop. This is available from the top menu after you've logged in.
Can my University buy access?
Universities and Further Education Institutions can buy access for students and faculty.
The UKPressOnline Archives are available through JISC Collections.
Please see:
JISC Catalogue for UKPressOnline (Annual Access)
JISC Catalogue for UKPressOnline (Perpetual Licence)
I've registered but I haven't received a confirmation email?
If you've set up an account by going through the 'Register' process but haven't had an email to confirm that your account is active there are a few things to check.
It is likely that your account has been correctly set-up. You should log in with your username and password and check the details in the 'My Account' page.
- The most common cause of problems receiving emails from UKPressOnline is that an incorrect email address was typed into the account details. You can change this in the 'My Account' page.
- If you can't remember your username and password you can email UKPressOnline with any details you remember. We'll reset the details in your Account for you and you should then receive our emails without problems.
- Check that your mail provider or spam filter is not blocking mail from ukpressonline.co.uk
Copyright
I want to use a photograph from a page I have downloaded. How do I go about it?
See our Publications page where you can contact publishers directly.
Please note however that it may not be possible to supply certain images for various reasons, including copyright being held by a third party.
Browsers
Which browsers are supported by UKPressOnline?
We have made great efforts to ensure compatibility with most Web Browsers, whether Windows, Mac or Unix/Linux-based. Firefox, MS Edge and Safari are recommended.
Firefox: To enable PDF pages to be viewed correctly (with search-terms highlighted) you will need to tell Firefox to use the Adobe PDF plugin rather than the built-in PDF viewer.
Google Chrome: Although Chrome works for most functions, it is not recommended if you are viewing PDF files (search-terms are not accepted by the PDF Viewer in Chrome.
Safari: Note that you may have to switch the 'use Javascript' option back on after updating Safari.
If you have problems with your preferred browser, please email us at Technical Desk.
To use this site. please allow javascript and site cookies in your browser.
If I have a technical query, what do I do?
For any technical problem, please email us at Technical Desk with us much detail[2] on the problem as you can supply; it helps if you can also supply any information on your own equipment that might be relevant - such as:
- Browser - eg, Firefox? Do you know which version?
- Internet connection - eg, broadband? Company network? Academic network?
- Your computer and its operating system - make, model?
- Connection - do you know if you go through a proxy or cache server?
For specific issues, any additional information that can assist us in recreating the problem would be appreciated.
- [2] Information is used only to diagnose your problem and will not be stored in any data-retrieval system after resolution, when all specific data will be deleted (apart from basic information about your request and actions taken by us.