This is the third in a series of four blog posts from Nina Risoli, one of our Tri-Borough Reference Librarians about two of our online reference databases:
You can catch up with last two posts, an introduction to both databases and more about UK Newsstand. This week Nina tells us about the Times Digital Archive.
Times Digital Archive (TDA) offers access to 200 years of The Times and The Sunday Times. Just think – you can read the news as it happened from 1785 onwards!
That is, from the time when life and some of the people in the news most probably looked like this.
This is the Times’ very own editor, John Walter, from that first 1785 issue to 1803.
Have a look at his first ever editorial (seen on that first cover page, headed ‘To The Public’), introducing to the world the publication that would over the next couple of centuries become one of the most read in this country and abroad, with its hand firmly on the pulse of European and World history in the making.
TIP: Have your library card number ready to access TDA. Once there, you can enlarge the text by dropping down the small menu on top of the citation which states “Article at 133%”
The beauty of the database is that it presents pages as they really appear, rather than displaying dry, document-style text characteristic of more modern newspaper databases. And yet, the entire text is keyword-searchable. Keywords are highlighted in pretty pink in the resulting articles, to help you assess the relevance of the ones you’ve retrieved.
You can see layouts and fonts used at the time, pictures, advertisements and captions, but with added extras. You can enlarge text to read it comfortably – even visually impaired people can enjoy browsing the database as any text can be amplified by up to 400%. You can also single out particular articles and view just those, rather than the whole page. You can print out anything of interest with easy pre-sets or e-mail citations with a couple of clicks.
More tips on how to navigate 200 years of British and world history:
For more specific searches you can define date ranges or use particular titles or names of authors if you have them. You can search by the newspapers section and choose articles from results divided into 7 categories: Advertising, Editorial/ Commentary, News, Business, Features, People or the Picture Gallery.
You can Browse List or Browse by Date, which allows you to view the entire newspaper, page for page, with the links to the individual articles conveniently displayed on the right. Try checking the paper from the date of your birth for example, and see how life was on the day you made your grand entrance.
By far the best tool at your disposal in TDA is the wonderful Keyword Search. You can use it to research any topic of interest from the whole 200 years of publication. You can get a comprehensive overview of any subject, person or event that was deemed newsworthy throughout the two centuries, up to 1985.
If you wish to have a demonstration of TDA or UK Newsstand please contact Kensington Central Reference Library by emailing information@rbkc.gov.uk, or call 0207 361 3031. A reference librarian will be delighted to help you get familiar with the databases and set you off on your own journey of discovery. Kensington Central Reference Library has 5 dedicated computers available for researching our online databases.
Nina Risoli, Tri- Borough Reference Librarian
Kensington Central Reference Library
rbkc libraries blog 