Our new look – The British Newspaper Archive Blog

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Our new look

Today we are excited to announce the launch of our new homepage!

What is on the new homepage?

All the features you are used to on The British Newspaper Archive homepage are still available to you. However, their look and placement may have changed with the launching of the new homepage. Let’s take a closer look at the new layout.

New search bar
Same menu, new search bar on the new homepage.

At the top, you’ll notice that the menu is laid out in the same manner: home, saved links, blog, help, about, and search. However, the search bar is now right beneath it and enlarged. As with the old homepage, you can either use the search field there or click the ‘Advanced’ button for a more detailed, refined initial search.

Quick links
Quick links for search hints & tips, searching the Archive, and exploring In Pictures.

Beneath the search section, you’ll find an updated counter of how many pages we have on site as well as some quick links. The links connect you to our hints & tips page, a search page with various fields for narrowing your search, and our recently released In Pictures search, which allows you to search selected illustrated newspapers for pictures.

Twitter feed
Stay up to date with our latest tweets.

At a glance, you can now keep up to date with our latest tweets and mentions on Twitter. This allows you to see highlighted titles, interesting finds, user success stories, and any new additions to the site.

Explore titles and filter by place
See latest additions and sort by title, county, or region.

On the home page, you can now see how many pages were added in the last week and which titles were added or updated recently. You can also begin your search by selecting a specific title, county, or region.

Featured blog posts
Easily find and view our featured blog posts.

Our blog is a great way to learn about new developments, search tips, and how the Archive can enhance and deepen your research. The homepage will now offer quick links to three featured blog posts.

Follow us on social media
Keep abreast of all new developments by following up on social media.

Never miss an update by clicking on the icons at the bottom of the page to follow The British Newspaper Archive on our social media accounts: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Leave a comment letting us know how you like the new homepage! And stay tuned, as we’ll be posting again soon about the new look of result pages and how to submit corrections to the OCR!

Check out other new feature posts

 

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22 comments On Our new look

  • Oh dear so difficult to navigate and find things now. Just wasted a lot of time trying to find the newspaper I wanted to look at quickly.

    • Hi Ann — I’m sorry to hear you had difficulties navigating quickly to a newspaper. Your feedback will be passed along to our development team.

  • I wonder what were you hoping to achieve with your new home page. The simple search box at the top is useless to me, and the advanced search is unnecessarily detailed as a starting point. So now I have to scroll down about three screens-worth to choose my region and/or newspaper. There is too much distracting colour. The font sizes are inexplicable to me: the name of the single newspaper I am searching is huge and takes up too much real estate, while my current search criteria are tiny. I receive your emails, so I am not interested in seeing “stories” on the home page. (In fact, these stories are very rarely of interest to me.)

    • Hello, thank you for commenting with your concerns and suggestions for the optimal layout of the homepage. We have passed your feedback along to our development team.

  • Have you tested this – the functionality of is severely compromised as I do not seem to be able to cut and paste whole articles any longer. I cannot select an article on a page by double mouse click. There seems myriad problems and I cant be the only one have problems.
    I love the BNA as a resource but it now severely compromised.

    • Hi Andrew, I’m sorry to hear that you’ve encountered some bugs in using the site. We’ve passed your feedback on to our development team.

  • I agree with the previous posters. The website has been rendered unusable for my needs – I can no longer select articles, copy and paste the text etc. And who cares about Twitter and suchlike? I think that, unlike the workers at the BNA, the vast majority of the public have no interest whatsoever in so-called social media. Please get the website to work, and de-clutter it, we are paying good money for this service!

    • Hello John, thank you for commenting with your concerns in light of our latest round of updates to the site. We’ve made note of your concerns and passed them on to our development team.

  • I’m confused! There are no tabs to edit the text as far as I can see, as mentioned in the instructions. I can see the OCR in the box on the left but I cannot get access to it to copy and paste it like I used to be able.

  • If I for instance put Yorkshire and the surname I am looking for in the search bar (why oh why can’t I select the county at the beginning of the search any more?) I get every entry with Yorkshire Post on it. Search is unusable at the moment and this is frustrating. I am subscribing to a service that I can’t use.

    • Hi Jenny, sorry for your frustration with the new search layout. I will make a note of your comments and pass them on to the development team.

  • My particular gripe is with the ‘search’ bar that drops down from the top of the screen when you start to refine your search. This was added earlier in the week to solve what problem I know not. To refine my search (for example by ‘year’) I now sometimes have to click twice downwards and then once upwards to find the right option. Worse things have happened in my life I admit, but it is annoying when I can see no obvious use for this change.

    I also agree with ldavies’ comments above about the mix of font sizes.

  • Why did you not ask your paying customers for suggestions before changing your website? The new website is a disaster! Do something about it very soon – or I for one will be demanding a refund. I cannot look at the new font/contrasting colours without feeling sick. I am disabled with arthritis in my hands and wrists and therefore cannot type out the text of a particular article – now that you have taken away the ‘copy and paste’ option… I could go on……. Maybe your ‘development’ team should look at the wonderful newspaper archive websites in New Zealand and Australia (both free) for some ideas: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/ and http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/

    You obviously launched your new website far too soon – and none of the ‘development’ team can be interested in historical research.

  • I can’t get access to the OCR. What happened? Am I doing something wrong? Your cut and paste function was so absolutely wonderful and without it I am up the proverbial creek. Please help.

    • Hello Anne, we have now fixed the cut & paste option. Thank you for alerting us. You may need to do a ‘hard refresh’ to ensure you are seeing the box as it should display. Press CTRL and F5 at the same time when on the BNA site.

  • Please would you explain the advantages of the “upgrade” especially as regards using OCR’d text. Thanks

  • Sadly, I agree with all the previous posters and have to add that I do not like the “new look” at all. Some bright spark obviously had nothing to do one day! Why was it deemed necessary to change something that worked perfectly well? The old adage “if it’s not broken, why mend it” seems to come to mind…
    It wouldn’t surprise me if you lost a good number of loyal customers as a result of this, I am bearing that in mind myself.

  • George Cruickshank

    How are we meant to scroll up/down and left/right on a page after zooming in so that the text is large enough to read?
    The old navigation box with arrows has disappeared and there are no scroll bars or grab-hand.
    I can sympathise with a lot of the latest comments – the so-called new look is no advantage.

  • Hi
    Just trying to crop a newspaper page. I can’t do anything with the page other than save as a pdf, which sadly is no good to me. I don’t have Microsoft Office on my laptop so not sure how do convert the file. The only thing I can do is print it, but the writing is then so small that it’s not really readable. Can you help please?

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