I love the Trove search of Australian newspapers. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/search?adv=y

Is there anything similar for other counties? (Any countries other than UK, don’t care about UK)
Where I can search multiple newspapers in multiple states simultaneously, for as far back as the earliest newspapers in that country.

google has something like this

SCIENCE said:

google has something like this

This one? Ta, hadn’t seen it before.
https://news.google.com/newspapers

Try Nevada Daily Mail
I can browse by year. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=M3zsPnPgUlUC

I can search by topic. eg. https://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=indian+%22Nevada+Daily+Mail%22+site:news.google.com/newspapers

Search by topic doesn’t give results from Nevada Daily Mail, and I can’t limit it to any time.

OK, it looks like Google Newspapers gives images of newspapers, one newspaper at a time, but not searchable text. Good start, though.

Trove is the best in the world. I know of no other countries with anything remotely similar.

Divine Angel said:

Trove is the best in the world. I know of no other countries with anything remotely similar.

If only, if only, they had a good image to text converter.

mollwollfumble said:

Divine Angel said:

Trove is the best in the world. I know of no other countries with anything remotely similar.

If only, if only, they had a good image to text converter.

Morning all.
Trove may not have an image to text converter but Microsoft does. https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-convert-an-image-to-text

mollwollfumble said:

(Any countries other than UK, don’t care about UK)

LOL

I’m the same with San Marino.

Tamb said:

mollwollfumble said:

Divine Angel said:

Trove is the best in the world. I know of no other countries with anything remotely similar.

If only, if only, they had a good image to text converter.

Morning all.
Trove may not have an image to text converter but Microsoft does. https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-convert-an-image-to-text

ain’t nothin’ new, this kind of thing’s been around for ages, some people think it sounds a bit rough and uncultivated but we reckon it’s nice and earthy

SCIENCE said:

Tamb said:

mollwollfumble said:

If only, if only, they had a good image to text converter.

Morning all.
Trove may not have an image to text converter but Microsoft does. https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-convert-an-image-to-text

ain’t nothin’ new, this kind of thing’s been around for ages, some people think it sounds a bit rough and uncultivated but we reckon it’s nice and earthy

It’s a bit kludgy but it works.

> https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-convert-an-image-to-text

But does it work in Arabic?
Seriously though, I need to look into this because all the image to text converters I’ve seen so far are crap.
The ideal way is to pre-program the newspaper font into the converter – then ONLY use that font when reading the newspaper.

> https://news.google.com/newspapers

Since this only works for browse newspaper one by one, I’ve made a list of all (?) notable early newspapers. To make it onto the list, the newspaper has to be:

• First published before 1900 (except for Nigeria and Kenya)
• Published for at least 50 years
• If in a foreign language, only one per country (except Japan)

mollwollfumble said:

> https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-convert-an-image-to-text

But does it work in Arabic?
Seriously though, I need to look into this because all the image to text converters I’ve seen so far are crap.
The ideal way is to pre-program the newspaper font into the converter – then ONLY use that font when reading the newspaper.

> https://news.google.com/newspapers

Since this only works for browse newspaper one by one, I’ve made a list of all (?) notable early newspapers. To make it onto the list, the newspaper has to be:

• First published before 1900 (except for Nigeria and Kenya)
• Published for at least 50 years
• If in a foreign language, only one per country (except Japan)

What are all those damned UK papers doing on that list?

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

> https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-convert-an-image-to-text

But does it work in Arabic?
Seriously though, I need to look into this because all the image to text converters I’ve seen so far are crap.
The ideal way is to pre-program the newspaper font into the converter – then ONLY use that font when reading the newspaper.

> https://news.google.com/newspapers

Since this only works for browse newspaper one by one, I’ve made a list of all (?) notable early newspapers. To make it onto the list, the newspaper has to be:

• First published before 1900 (except for Nigeria and Kenya)
• Published for at least 50 years
• If in a foreign language, only one per country (except Japan)

What are all those damned UK papers doing on that list?

Well at least I left “The Times” off.

Jesus H … there have been free image-to-text converters online since the last millennium

dv said:

Jesus H … there have been free image-to-text converters online since the last millennium

Yes, but they’re all “artificial intelligence” style image to text conversion. Which means, no control of fonts, and hence no friggin way to improve the output.

eg. The first newspaper article from a random search of Trove contains a passage which converts to text as:

• Fresh berf and mutton, Is. Gd.; bacon 2s . ; Lult-r(#i!i) Is. 4 d .; fresh 2s. (id .; ian sron I s .; pn;k (fresh) Is. (Id.- salt ditto G d.; Vle-ese 2 s.; cufiec Is-Gd.; raisins Is.; dried fruits is, Gd.; rice fid .; potatoes 4 d ,; teu 7 s .; sugar is. 4 d .; flour 6 d ; soap Is. 6 d .; starch 2* ; gunpowder 4spvr

The original is:

And even Blind Freddy can read that as: Fresh beef and mutton, 1s. 6d,; bacon 2s.; butter (salt) 1s. 4d.; fresh 2s. 6d.; kangaroo 1s.; pork (fresh) 1s. 6d.; salt ditto 6d.; cheese 2s.; coffee 1s. 6d.; etc.,

If, if ever you find even one image-to-text converter program that allows me to input my own font(s) then let me know immediately.

mollwollfumble said:

dv said:

Jesus H … there have been free image-to-text converters online since the last millennium

Yes, but they’re all “artificial intelligence” style image to text conversion. Which means, no control of fonts, and hence no friggin way to improve the output.

eg. The first newspaper article from a random search of Trove contains a passage which converts to text as:

• Fresh berf and mutton, Is. Gd.; bacon 2s . ; Lult-r(#i!i) Is. 4 d .; fresh 2s. (id .; ian sron I s .; pn;k (fresh) Is. (Id.- salt ditto G d.; Vle-ese 2 s.; cufiec Is-Gd.; raisins Is.; dried fruits is, Gd.; rice fid .; potatoes 4 d ,; teu 7 s .; sugar is. 4 d .; flour 6 d ; soap Is. 6 d .; starch 2* ; gunpowder 4spvr

The original is:

And even Blind Freddy can read that as: Fresh beef and mutton, 1s. 6d,; bacon 2s.; butter (salt) 1s. 4d.; fresh 2s. 6d.; kangaroo 1s.; pork (fresh) 1s. 6d.; salt ditto 6d.; cheese 2s.; coffee 1s. 6d.; etc.,

If, if ever you find even one image-to-text converter program that allows me to input my own font(s) then let me know immediately.

Sounds like you could get involved with correcting stuff in Trove-
https://help.nla.gov.au/trove/using-trove/getting-to-know-us/trove-is

Image to text can do good things, but there’s the need for humans to get in too. I got involved with a project that had old ship logs with weather observations, they got volunteers to read the old entries which were in often beautiful writing, and to type out all the info so they could crunch the numbers. Beautifully preserved ships books are great, but you can’t feed them into the computer without a bit of help.

I was on Trove a few days ago, searching for new stuff on my grandparents. I’d found an article my grandfather wrote on his experiences at Poziers in WW1 a few months ago, to the delight of my family who had now known about it. I found another one from him written while on leave in Paris, which needs much more editing (I may go back and do it). Amazing to read him, over 100 years later. Found other stuff from both sides of the family, insights into times gone by, like long description of a wedding. There is fantastic stuff to be found in the old papers, worth just diving in for a lucky dip at times.

mollwollfumble said:

> https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-convert-an-image-to-text

But does it work in Arabic?
Seriously though, I need to look into this because all the image to text converters I’ve seen so far are crap.
The ideal way is to pre-program the newspaper font into the converter – then ONLY use that font when reading the newspaper.

> https://news.google.com/newspapers

Since this only works for browse newspaper one by one, I’ve made a list of all (?) notable early newspapers. To make it onto the list, the newspaper has to be:

• First published before 1900 (except for Nigeria and Kenya)
• Published for at least 50 years
• If in a foreign language, only one per country (except Japan)

It looks like none of the newspapers on that list, not a single one, is accessible through the https://news.google.com/newspapers website. I’ve drawn a complete blank on all the UK, other Europe, USA, and other Americas lists.

So scrap that.

Gutenberg website doesn’t do newspapers.

What about Wikipedia’s list of online newspapers?
Well at least three are there, behind a paywall :-(