Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Ancestry has added 20 million images to its Historical Newspaper Collection—doubling the collection in size! And to celebrate, they’re 
offering free access to the entire collection through 19 June 2008. Click here to start searching now.
More information on this huge launch is also available on the Ancestry blog.
I’ve tried several times putting names and location — and it’s disappointing that what comes up are newspapers in other states, and name results that are not the exact phrase of the name but have the two words on the page somewhere. Can this be tweaked and improved? I’ve tried both the “new” ancestry search and the former search box.
Newspapers remain a wonderful possibility due to advancing technology… I have found other newspaper sites, some paid and some completely free (regional) for old newspaper items — and with hose I have been able to limit results to exact phrase or newspaper or location.
It doesn’t do much good to search when all I get is an “error processing” note. This has been going on for Days and not just within this one area.
I have used the newspaper collection for the past two years extensively. I discovered that what you think is true may not be. For instance, when looking for information on a relative in Illinois, I thought that the papers that came up in Arkansas or Florida, Iowa or Wisconsin were surely not correct. However, when I finally opened them, I found that this relative’s picture and a newspaper article had been put out on the AP wire and there were actually articles and information that I had missed printed in the out of state papers. So, don’t be too quick to dismiss other papers. There just might be something of interest.
I, too, have found the newspaper searches to be very disappointing. The highlighted word is almost never what I put in to search for, and sometime the margins are highlighted. I am also hoping that future tweaking will help- it would really be great if it worked like it should.
i love all history and family tree.
The Newspapers have been worthless to me. How about publishing the NY State Censuses?
The Newspapers have been worthless to me. How about publishing the NY City Directories?
While I do not find the Newspapers worthless, only frustating at times, I agree that the New York State census images would be a very useful resource!
Thought it would be great to get free access to newspapers from Ancestry for 3 days to see what was available before made a commitment for a yearly subscript.
What a disappointment when searching after a few success in surname and then find the majority of the rest of the extensive dates supposidly available having a continual “error message’ site unavailable, etc. Tried everythng numerous times to get the data but no luck. What gives ??????
Don’t think a subscription to ancestry will be all that it touts as being. Sure all should have second thoughts before subscribing if this is an example of what happens. Too bad, I sure had high expectations.
Fix your problems pronto Ancestry!!!
Same thing here: I get “error processing request”. Help,please.
Whenever this site offers something for free, there’s always a problem. Every newspaper I click on brings me to an error page. With service like this you hope to encourage people to become members?????
Every entry I tried and every site I clicked on came up as Error Processing. I quit.
I found that if a thumbnail print of the article appeared, I could get to the article. If no thumbnail appeared, I’d get the “error” message. My searches turned up a lot of Stars & Stripes articles … so those looking for military listings might get lucky!
Although it’s time consuming and not always easy to search through results, the newspaper collection has given me many valuable records and information. I found many articles about my maternal grandparents social events from the mid-1920s in Gary, Indiana. The Michigan newpapers I searched on Ancestry provided me with 3 separate articles of my paternal great grandfather’s struggle against city hall for incorrect tax charges, with the last article showing he eventually won his battle and got a refund. I also found sales of land and obituaries, and even a photo. The Ancestry repository of newspapers are such a valuable and interesting resource and it saves time to be able to search online rather than having to write to sources for articles.
Wow ! Really bad indexing. I gave up after half-a-dozen bogus “hits”. I shouldn’t have bothered.
For those of you who are having the viewing error problems this is a hint. Check your resolution. If you are trying to use the greatest (clearest) viewing on your computer settings you will get an error. Go back and change it to the regular standard viewing. For whatever reason I had to do that and now I can see all of the sites and images and no longer get an error. Also check to see if you have blockers in place that won’t allow viewing of blocked sites. Hope this helps.
Also, I am not really pleased with the newspaper site. The site should be more user friendly. I would like more direct usage to certain newspapers. I don’t want to see a million different papers. For the vast amount of information they say they have I sure don’t seem to see any papers I need. Have a good day.
I have tried several times to use the newspaper site, but have had no luck at all – very disappointing.
I am very disappointed in this “free” service. Despite hours of exploring various newspapers and family names, I received very little information, even when the code clearly said there was material available. Often the download didn’t work and, when it did, there was no information on the page. New York City papers were especially problematic. I can’t imagine anyone’s actually paying to use this source.
Very disappointing to enter info and name for a State & come up with 40,000 articles of which aren’t even close to what I entered. So much for free. Why I quit the Ancestry.com due to very little info & lottsa money for the year…
Re: The Newspaper Search Box. I put in a last name: “Starkey” and a state: “New York”, and got over 26,000 entries on 350+ newspapers from states as far away the west coast. What is the point of trying to narrow our searches if you get all 50 states in response? This frustration with Ancestry’s ignoring their own search box criteria is one of the reasons I refuse to waste my money on a subscription. If eBay can design their searches using plus (+) and minus (-) parameters, why can’t Ancestry? If you search for “Starkey” + “New York”, all you should get back is a mention of Starkey in New York, not 26,000+ mentions in 50 states. Why is this so difficult for Ancestry to comprehend?
I also found the newspaper research to end up in lots of squinting for nothing to be found except a few disconnected search terms. It is surprising that this incomplete research service was offered to promote interest in Ancestry.com. I do admit delight in finding my dad’s name in the military publications, and can hardly wait until more efficient search capabilities are offered.