Our newspaper Archive contains many thousands of obituaries and death notices, which can help you unlock fascinating information and stories about your family history. In this special blog, we present your guide to obituaries on The Archive: how to search them, where to find them, and how to make the most of them for your family history research. But first, what is an obituary? Register now and explore the Archive What Is An Obituary? An obituary, according to the Cambridge …
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So far this November we’ve been celebrating all things local history, and earlier this month we brought you a guide on how to discover more about the history of your street. But now we turn from urban to rural, as we take a look at how to uncover the history of those places where there might only be one street, the hamlets and the villages of the United Kingdom. This blog, therefore, will show you how to uncover local history …
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The British Newspaper Archive is a fantastic resource for local history, and in particular, it can be very useful in researching the history of your street. In this special blog, we will give you all the hints and tips you will need to start your own research into your road, whilst also examining the story of one of London’s lesser known historic streets, which was once a pathway of pilgrims before becoming one of the city’s most notorious slums. So …
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One of the features of The British Newspaper Archive is the OCR editing tool. This allows every user to contribute to the improvement of The Archive. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition– the process we use to transform millions of digitised images into searchable text. The computer takes an image of the page and then turns each line into text. However, as many of us have encountered, the text is not always correct and needs improvement. As a group, we …
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During the month of September, The British Newspaper Archive is delving into stories of local history. We have had the pleasure of a guest blog by local Exeter historian David Cronforth and another blog demonstrating how to use The Archive for local history, as well as a webinar about using newspapers for local history research. To continue our theme, we are looking at local English culinary treats including the Yorkshire pudding, Staffordshire oatcake, Cornish pasty, eel pies of London’s East End and …
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In May, The British Newspaper Archive participated in #AncestryHour, a Twitter event which takes place every Tuesday 7 pm BST organised by @Ancestryhour. Each week, the community gathers to discuss the latest news in the genealogy world, give expert advice to novice researchers, and share stories of their recent genealogy discoveries. In a special #Ancestryhour, @BNArchive answered questions live on twitter about our site using the hashtag #AskBNA. We had a wide range of questions and responses. If you didn’t …
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Last week, the British Newspaper Archive hosted its first ever webinar, and we are delighted to say it was a success. We had over 3,500 people register to watch the webinar, and since then, we have had more watch on demand. If you missed the event, you can watch it through our YouTube channel. The discount code displayed at the end of the webinar is no longer valid. During and after the event, the questions came in thick and fast. Over …
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Britain’s favourite horticultural happening is right around the corner once again. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show begins on 23 May and will be held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, for the 105th time. To celebrate, we’re showing you exactly how to go about unearthing newspaper stories on the Flower Show, and other long-running events, using our ever-growing Archive. Register now and view 3 pages for FREE Searching for an event in the Archive is much like searching for a person’s …
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Thousands arrived at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham for Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2017 between Thursday 6 April and Saturday 8 April. Today, we are reviewing a few of the family history stories revealed during the show and we will share 5 of the top search tips discussed during the event. The event welcomed family historians and genealogists from across the country to come together to discuss their research and to find out more about the …