Search Tips

As our Digital Media Bank contains thousands of items, finding what you want may require careful searching. Below are some tips for searching for specific types of content.

Newspapers

If you are searching for material in newspapers, it is likely that you will either be searching for a specific time period or keywords.

Time period search

If searching for a newspaper by date or year, the easiest method is to browse through to the newspaper category. From here you can run simple searches against days, months and years. If you are unsure of the precise year, it is possible to use an asterisk to search by decade eg 'June 184*'

As an example, this search looks for all copies of the Brighton Herald published in the month of June during the 1840s.

Subject search

The text in these newspapers has been scanned so that it is also searchable alongside the descriptive metadata. A simple search can be carried out with the same technique as time period searches, but using text instead of dates and times.

For example, this search looks for copies of the Brighton Herald that contain the word 'monkey'.

For best results, use the Advanced Search facility. Enter your search term in the top box marked 'Keyword search' and make sure the 'File Content only' button is selected. Select Historic Newspapers from the search category, and then run the search. As an example, this search looks for mentions of the word 'pyjama' throughout our newspaper collections.

It is possible to use the Advanced Search facility to build complex searches, For example, this search looks for references to 'Palace Pier' and 'Volk' in newspapers published in the 1880s.

Download and View

Once you have located a newspaper that matches your search you will need to examine the content. By clicking on the Browse option you can view the newspaper through your browser. But as these newspapers are bulky files that can be slow to open and search through, it is sometimes quicker and easier to download the newspaper to your computer first.