Comments on: Huge Newspaper Addition Coming…

By: Athena

Athena — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:00:46 +0000

“One of the ways is by giving a quick snippet from the paper to quickly view the area surrounding the word found.”

Personally, I would prefer less focus on fancy web features and more work on the basic search tools. I want to be able to limit my newspaper search to those published in a specific location (e.g. state) and at a specific time.

If I start my search from the old search dialog, I can click on the state then get a link to newspapers for that specific state…but I can’t search on all newspapers for the area at once. If I start from the Historical Newspaper link, location and date mean nothing — any mention of the state name or year in the text will appear in the hit list.

My biggest complaint about the newspapers though, is the way the images are handled by Ancestry Press. Not only is it impossible to get a legible printout of an article, but the printout doesn’t actually include usable source information. Who ever heard of printing a newspaper article without including the date of publication and page number? The “source” information that prints as a footer is totally useless.

By: Colin

Colin — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:05:24 +0000

I hope that someone may be able to shed some light on some current issues that I am experiencing with the “new and improved” newspaper database. A significant number of my family members appeared in the Historical Newspaper database for the past couple of years. Now these entries are gone. What has happend to the Historical Newspaper database? This is one of the primary reasons that I am a member of http://www.ancestry.com

By: Wilma H. Smith

Wilma H. Smith — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:46:33 +0000

I have years of obits, births, marriages, anniversaries. Even birthdays. Most of them are from Hamilton Co. Iowa and the area around them that I have clipped from newspapers. Wonder if you would be interested in having them. Just let me know. Thank you, Wilma

By: IFrench

IFrench — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:17:35 +0000

I would like the option to omit names for example when looking for my ancestors with the last name Dunne I would like to omit the first name Irene.

By: netzband

netzband — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:39:23 +0000

Gary,
Duh. Close my mouth, stop my fingers from writing another comment. The new ones appear today in the search. THANK you.

By: netzband

netzband — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:37:17 +0000

Gary,
Are you waiting until your have all the new newspaper pages available before including it in the Historical Newspaper search? I ask this because I keep checking, and the new ones don’t seem to show up there.

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:04:52 +0000

What happened to the New York Times searching? It seems that simple names that I used to find dozens and dozens of names in the New York Times under the birth, death, marriage records in newspapers is now totally useless and not finding anything. What happened????

By: netzband

netzband — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:51:05 +0000

THANK YOU!!!!! I can’t tell you how excited I am. My daughter-in-law remembers going as a small girl to New Mexico and meeting her grandmother and grandfather. Unfortunately, later she was adopted and did not see them again. We have searched for years for her grandmother’s death date, knowing only that she died young and was cremated.

I found the obituary today in the new additions. I can’t tell you what it means to us. Thank you, Ancestry.

I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

By: Gary Gibb

Gary Gibb — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:08:49 +0000

Great feedback. Thank you. We hear you on the need for better search tools with the newspapers. We are working on making the search better in some very significant ways. One of the ways is by giving a quick snippet from the paper to quickly view the area surrounding the word found. Hopefully this will save lots of time and effort when searching.

I also appreciate the strong interest in the newspapers and in diversity in the content collections.
Thanks for the feedback GG

By: christine

christine — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:48:10 +0000

Ohio scanned every newspaper ever published in the state but I notice very limited offerings through ancestry. I have however managed to find a several articles which added tremendously to the story! I want more!