Does Anyone Use Newspaper Archives?

I just wondered how many folks use the site? Has it been useful? Pros? Cons? The cost?

The answer to your question is no there is very little interest to use it . How do I know that, it is because over the past few years the whole idea of reseach and philatelic studies has gone into the sewer .

Yea a few people will cry about what I am saying , they will show somebody doing philatelic research who lives on the North slope of the Alaska coast or another from Siberia , but they can't argue with what is the reason Segio Sismondo research material and all his fakes and forgeries didn't sell well , or the massive philatelic library of O'Neil fanstactic library of books is now selling for pennies on the dollar at Kelleher Auctions . Plus look at all the collections build on research work doesn't get good prices at stamp auctions now , really nice collections of years of study are selling at opening bid .

People just are not buying and displaying works being done now ,sure a heck of a lot was done 60 and 40 years ago ,collectors wanted to show and write up their studies ,but now for-get-about-it . .

Thanks for that response. Also, looking at the title here, I was possibly unclear ... NewspaperArchive is a database of old newspapers from across the country. I wonder how good the searching mechanisms are ... if the images are clear ... etc.

The answer is generally "yes", although I have not been on the specific site you mention, so have no direct comment about it. True scholars use a variety of resources to augment their knowledge, although the time and monetary investment of original research is rarely returned. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

The various newspaper websites are frequently very useful for postal history research (more so than for stamps). There are still significant gaps in coverage of titles/years and in the quality of the OCR with any of the sites, so it takes some search creativity and one must resort to microfilm for some titles. If there is a typo in the original and perfect OCR'ing, then finding something can still be very difficult. Although driven more by genealogists, the websites which cater to them keep getting better with time and help us too. I would be inclined to use whatever newspaper website your local library has for free.

Newspapers.com is another big one, so if anyone has experience with that one, would love to hear it.

I found that when I searched for a newspaper in my area( The Lowell Sun from Lowell Ma.) The archive only went to 1977. It seems from that year then on there is no records ANYWHERE of this newspaper from 1978 to current. Funny there was in 2019 as I used to read them(Papers from the 1980s and 90s . Now- No matter where I search, whether it be Newspaper sites, or general internet searchs. The keynote takeaway from this is to make sure what you want to look at is available on the site you are suscribing too. Can be expensive .

I read that as a straight question, not thinking that it related to a particular site

In Australia we have Trove, 100% free and I use it every day.

New Zealand's similar site is also free.

I haven't used the American site, but have used the UK site, which is also a subscription model, but if you're savvy with your searching you can extract the information you require.

I suggest you visit your local library or their online website. They may offer a free version of newspaper archives or newspapers.com for you to try out before subscribing. I have spent a lot of time on those sites reading those old weekly columns about stamp collecting that they published back in the 1930s through the 1950s.

Thanks again for ideas and info. The local library only offers a site that covers a handful of regional states. I often need to search for info countrywide. I goofed on this topic's heading and indeed should have made it clear I sought info about NewspaperArchives (a specific site) along with Newspapers.com ... or any other. Thanks again.

As a general answer, per my experience, newspaper archives are an absolute boon to philatelic research. Over the past 6 - 7 years, much of my published research on postage and revenue stamps drew on information from newspapers.com, the NY Times newspaper archive, and chroniclingamerica.loc.gov (the Library of Congress newspaper archive, which is free). The key to using newspaper archives is to tap several of them. Drawing on just one can result in a myopic view of whatever topic you're looking into.

In my area, all micro-film was purchased by a 3rd party company. As of when I am writing this message, payment is required to access anything that was printed before the 1990's.
This actually kind-of sucks, due to the fact much of the detailed history of my town is completely lost - including the fact DuBois Pennsylvania was amongst the first cities to have electrified trollies and the first electrified trolly park. [ Source: duboispa.gov ]

In terms of using commercial newspaper archive products, I have used Genealogy Bank off and on. For certain areas and cities, it offers more coverage than the Library of Congress site, so you can check for example competing coverage, or check morning and afternoon coverage on breaking events.
Searching - it's not great, but it works pretty well. The search interface is mainly for personal names, as one would expect given the title of the database, but the "advanced search" includes somewhat rudimentary keyword searching in combination with date limiting which I have used for philatelic work. With keyword searching, one does get quite a bit of chaff with the wheat, but one can use quotes to invoke phrase searching (which seems not documented in their help). Sometimes you will also get a lot of redundant results. These fail mainly into two classes: duplication from syndication and when multiple editions of the same paper carry the same article.

I originally subscribed to it in alternate years -- primarily as a genealogy tool -- so I got a half-price rate as a new subscriber. But now I just subscribe.

I would be interested in what others might be using in the way of similar tools....

Finally, I would observe, that sometimes Genealogy Bank and other such tools do not have newspaper content online from some particular local newspaper. When I have had a particular date in mind, I have sometimes emailed the local history section or special collections of the local public library and gotten them to check if there is anything for me. They may or may not have time to look in microfilm for you, but some places have amazing locally built indexes (in a card catalog form) which are great time-savers. Most if not all of those were given up in the 70's as ongoing efforts, but preserved as useful tools.

I have used newspapers.com and have found the search facility robust and comprehensive. The main issue for me is that often when I get a hit I can't stop myself looking at other things that are on the same page and then end up going down a lot of non-philatelic rabbit holes. Time well wasted perhaps....