Tim Sherratt PRO
Historian and hacker. All the slide decks available here are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Fee free to reuse and share!
Trove tips & tricks
for newspapers
- 1,729 newspapers
- 236,164,194 articles
- 1803 onwards
Trove newspapers
searching
simple search
advanced search
X
both support complex searches
they're just different
'simple' vs 'advanced'
- advanced – you can filter your search by selecting multiple categories, newspapers, or states
- simple – you can narrow your results by using facets to select a single category, newspaper, or state
but otherwise...
'advanced' = 'simple'
= same number of results...
more complex queries
- enter extra parameters in either the 'simple' search box
- or the 'advanced' All of these words box
=
| Query | Results | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| hobart | 5,774,557 | Searches article text, tags & comments (some fuzziness, terms are stemmed) |
| hobart* | 5,842,476 | Searches article text, tags & comments (more fuzziness, wildcard matches zero or more characters) |
| text:hobart | 5,491,660 | Searches article text only (exact match, ignores tags & comments) |
| title:hobart | 717,168 | Searches headlines only |
fulltext, fields & fuzziness
| Query | Results | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| white OR australia | 47,559,034 | |
| white australia | 5,628,099 | Same as white AND australia |
| "white australia" | 156,131 | Search for phrase (with stemming) |
| text:"white australia" | 151,930 | Search for phrase (no stemming & ignores tags/comments) |
| "white australia"~0 | 149,955 | Search for phrase (with stemming, no extra words) |
| text:"white australia"~0 | 146,497 | Search for exact phrase (no extra words, no stemming, ignore tags/comments) |
de-fuzzify phrases
| Query | Results | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| naturalisation | 239,057 | Stemmed to 'naturalis' |
| naturalization | 14,853,488 | Stemmed to 'natur' |
| text:naturalisation | 126,539 | No stemming |
| text:naturalization | 23,677 | No stemming |
stemming oddities
filter by date
you can set date ranges using 'advanced' search calendar widgets or use...
| Query | Explanation |
|---|---|
| date:[1901 TO 1904] | 1 January 1901 to 31 December 1904 |
| date:[* TO 1904] | before 31 December 1904 |
| date:[1904 TO 1904] | 1 January 1904 to 31 December 1904 |
| date:[1942-10-31T00:00:00Z TO 1942-11-30T00:00:00Z] | 1 November 1942 to 31 November 1942 (dates need timezones, first date in range ignored) |
| date:[1942-11-09T00:00:00Z TO 1942-11-10T00:00:00Z] | 10 November 1942 (dates need timezones, first date in range ignored) |
proximity searches
| Query | Results | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| chinese tasmania | 275,812 | articles contain both terms |
| "chinese tasmania"~10 | 4,110 | articles where 'tasmania' is within 10 words of 'chinese' |
| "tasmania chinese"~10 | 4,121 | terms in reverse order are matched, but reversing counts towards the word distance so results can differ |
| "tasmania chinese"~10 OR "chinese tasmania"~10 | 4,617 | 10 word distance in either direction |
other parameters
| Query | Results | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| firstpageseq:1 | 19,261,518 | articles published on page 1 |
| publictag:hobart | 7,704 | articles tagged 'hobart' |
user activity
| Query | Results | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| has:corrections | 14,461,673 | articles with one or more OCR corrections |
| NOT has:corrections | 225,237,549 | uncorrected articles |
| has:tags | 4,630,828 | articles with user tags |
| has:comments | 252,231 | articles with user comments |
searching for names
use proximity searches to find different name forms
"clement wragge"~2 will match:
- clement wragge
- clement lindley wragge
- clement l. wragge
- wragge, clement
- wragge, mr clement
searching for names
combine names with related terms such as a place or occupation
- "clement wragge"~2 AND meteorology
- "clement wragge"~2 AND kosciuszko
but what are we searching?
2022
2011
Trove has a history
the Trove corpus
updated weekly!
searchable?
OCR quality?
6.1% of
articles
> 70% of family notices have corrections
what gets corrected?
non-English language content
52 newspapers
saving
use Zotero
- save metadata and PDFs with a single click
- add your own tags & comments
- share with collaborators
use Lists
- private, public, or collaborative
- login to see the multiple select option
quick Lists hack
add &pageSize=100 to your search url to get 100 results per page
the lists multiple select option is handy, but you're still limited to selecting 20 results at a time, unless...
export Lists
the built-in export feature doesn't provide complete article metadata, so...
tools & hacks
assorted workarounds for annoying problems & limitations
articles as images
newspapers by place
navigate by keyboard
GLAM Workbench
Trove newspapers tips & tricks
By Tim Sherratt
