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