Help & Frequently Asked Questions

Index

New Features
Search tips
- Calendar
- Search

Frequently Asked Questions

New Features

The Scotsman Digital Archive was given a new look and an upgrade on September 1st, 2005. This added several new features based on feedback from present users and our own research. The archive has a cleaner interface, should run more quickly and is far easier to navigate.

Searching

Our new search interface allows slightly more detailed search parameters. You may now specify 'excluded' words, such as searching for "MacDonald" but ignoring "McDonald", and so on.

In addition the search results themselves have a fresher look, providing links back to the original page in which the article appeared, aiding navigation between editions and article content.

Where possible, a text view is also offered, allowing users to read, copy and paste the text of articles - rather than viewing them in the original newsprint format.

Clippings and Tagging

Users may now make use of our newly-built clippings service. This allows articles to be 'clipped' and saved for later reading (although reading these articles still requires a subscription).

Articles are clipped with reminder information, such as a piece of text to accompany the article and remind you why you clipped it, the date you clipped the particular article and also some information on the edition it came from.

For genealogists and researchers, there is now also a 'tagging' system in place - which allows the user to place key words against clippings, which groups them together and makes later retrieval/searching of a large clipping collection much more straightforward.

Unlike in the past, clippings are stored in our Member Centre, held in our database as opposed to the user's machine, and thus would be available to the user, regardless of where they log into the Archive site.

PDF Format and Printing

Archive articles may now be saved off in PDF format, for printing and local storage. This has been requested by many users as a way of reading articles at a later date. At the same time, the archive's print function has had an overhaul, making simple printing much easier.

Pre-fetched Articles

The previous Archive site used to fetch each article on demand from our Archive storage system, when required. However the new site has pre-fetched the vast majority of articles, allowing instant viewing of most Archive content - greatly improving the site's speed.

Search Tips

The archive has The Scotsman from 25 January 1817-1930.

Publishing in Edinburgh Scotland, the archive holds The Scotsman in these formats:

25 January, 1817 – 28 December, 1822 published weekly
1 January, 1823 – 29 December, 1858 published twice a week
1 January, 1859 onwards published daily

It has never been published on a Sunday.

You can search The Scotsman digital archive by selecting the tab for:

Calendar for looking at any day.
Search for keyword searching.

Calendar

Allows you to view The Scotsman for any date.

Simply change the year to the one you wish to view, wait for the screen to change to that calendar, and then click on the date in the year you wish to search.

If you have subscribed, the front page will appear; if not, you will be offered the payment options.

Click anywhere on the page and you can read the article. You can move to the next page by clicking at the side of the page – right or left.

You can also move directly to a specific page number by typing in the page number in 'Go to page' in the menu bar and clicking 'Go'.

Search

Allows you to search for a keyword(s) anywhere in the archive.

Search for the word

Key in here the word(s) you are looking for.

The digital archive has been created from original copies of the newspaper, and you may find the age of the newspaper and quality of the paper itself in the originals, may affect the searchability and the results.

Please keep your search words simple and try the search options of using quotation marks, the wild card or selecting dates to improve your results. See the Search screen for examples of these.

Historically the use of words and spellings could be different to what is in use now. The following should also help you to get better results.

Names

People tended to be described more formally, e.g. Mr Maxwell, not George Maxwell as nowadays.

Be flexible in trying various versions of a name. Try searching with quote marks as a phrase, e.g. "george brown" and without, e.g. george brown. If there is an unusual first name or surname, try searching on that alone.

Initials were often used so e.g. try g. brown instead of george brown or use the wild card option of the asterisk (*), e.g. g* brown.

Births, Marriages, Deaths

Birth notices – women were called by their husband's name e.g. Mrs George Brown, Mrs Brown or the Lady of Captain Brown. Children might not be named e.g. 'To Mrs Brown a son'.

Deaths – as with Births, women were described in various ways e.g. Mrs Mary Smith relict of George Brown, or Mrs Brown, or Mrs Mary Brown.

Event name changes

The names given to some events have changed since they were first reported e.g. Charge of the Light Brigade was first reported as a charge by the Light Cavalry.

Please contact Archive Support if you would like to add to this list.

Spelling changes

Spellings have changed e.g. Barbados used to be spelled as Barbadoes.

Please contact Archive Support if you would like to add to this list.

Examples:

Buccleugh, now Buccleuch
Duddingstone, now Duddingston
Buenos Ayres, now Buenos Aires
Barbadoes, now Barbados
Chili, now Chile
Burntsfield, now called Bruntsfield in Edinburgh
Burntfield, now called Bruntsfield in Edinburgh
Pennycuick, now Penicuik
Prince's Street, now Princes Street Edinburgh
Hooping cough, now whooping cough

Wild card

Using the asterisk (*) can be useful if a name has been abbreviated e.g. Rob* would look for Robert and any other word beginning rob. It can also be used in the middle of names to allow for different spellings e.g. spe*rs will find speirs/spears/speers and is especially useful for names beginning Mc or Mac e.g. m*donald.

Abbreviations

Some first names were often abbreviated e.g. Robert (Ro. or Rob.), William (Wm), Thomas (Tho.), Daniel (Dan.). Use the wild card option of the asterisk (*) e.g. Tho* to improve your results.

Common words (stop words)

e.g. the, all, of, etc are common words and are not searchable so it makes no difference whether you include them or not.

Gothic font

Words in this font are not searchable

Hyphenated words

Words were often hyphenated to fit the space in the column. Try the wild card option of an asterisk (*) if you can't find the article you were looking for.

Apostrophes

Are recognised, e.g. Lloyd's List.

Full stops

Are recognised by the search engine but you may wish to try your search with and without the full stop.

Select date range

The default is searching the whole archive so you do not need to change the dates.

but you can choose to search a shorter period if you wish, by changing the start and end dates.

Please remember, events were often reported days/weeks afterwards, before the days of the telegraph and telephone, so widen your date range to help ensure you find the reports.

Sort results by

Relevance – is the default and means the most relevant articles appear first in the display of results. You will see the relevancy figure underneath the article preview.

Number of words – you see the articles with the most words first.

Oldest first – you see the oldest articles first.

Newest first – you see the most recent articles first.

Viewing results

Your results are listed showing the beginning of each article.

You can click 'Open article' to view the whole article. To do this, you will have to have taken out a subscription to the Archive – if not, then you will be presented with our current range of subscription offers.

Your search word(s) is underlined in blue.

Some articles extend across more than one column or page and you can read the previous or subsequent parts of the article by clicking 'Next segment' or 'Previous segment' at the top of the article.

'Show full page' shows the page the article is on and you can then move through the whole paper if you wish.

'Add to clippings' allows you to save your own selection of articles.

You can remove any article from your clippings by ticking the box and clicking Remove Selected.

You can also find the 'View clippings' area when you are looking at the full page.

Edition tab

Shows the last full page you viewed in the current session.

Last Search results tab

Shows the results of your last search in the current session.

Frequently Asked Questions

I have too many results

Use the date option to search a shorter period.
Try different words – use less common words if possible.
If you are looking for a phrase, i.e. two words you would expect to be adjacent, put quotes round it e.g. "highland society".
Add another search word to the 'Search for the word' box.
If you know the date of the event, look at the paper for the period, (using the Calendar search) but remember, events were not always reported immediately.
You can arrange your results to get the most relevant ones first. In the Search screen at the 'Sort results by' option, this is the standard setting or default.
Organise your results to get the oldest or newest results first, using the 'Sort results by' option.

I have few results/no results

Use the wild card option of an asterisk (*) to look for variations on your search term, e.g. emigra* will find emigrant/emigration/emigrates.
For names beginning Mc or Mac try using the wild card option of an asterisk, e.g. M*donald etc.
Names – the first name was often not used, people would be referred to as Mr Brown not George Brown so try just the surname. Try any unusual name on its own.
For names with different spellings, try using the wild card option of an asterisk, e.g. spe*rs would look for speirs/speers/spears.
If you know the date of the event, look at the paper around that date but remember, events were often reported days, weeks or even months afterwards.
Try an alternative name or spelling – remember spellings of some words have changed. See below – The spelling I am using is not giving me the results I expected.
Try different words.
If you are restricting your search by date, widen the dates searched.

I am having problems finding the name of a person

People tended to be described more formally, e.g. Mr Maxwell, not George Maxwell as nowadays.

Be flexible in trying various versions of a name. Try searching with quotes as a phrase (see Search for an example) and without, e.g. "george brown" or george brown. If there is an unusual first name or surname, try searching on that alone.

I am having problems finding the name of an event

The names given to some events have changed since they were first reported. Be imaginative and try other words that you think might have appeared. Check historical sources. Remember some spellings have changed too.

e.g. Charge of the Light Brigade was first reported as a charge by the Light Cavalry.

Please contact Archive Support if you would like to add such a change to our listing.

I am having problems finding a date

The archive holds The Scotsman for 1817-1930.

The Scotsman has been published in various formats over the years.

The archive holds the following:

25 January, 1817 – 28 December, 1822 published weekly.
1 January, 1823 – 29 December, 1858 published twice a week.
1 January, 1859 onwards – published daily.

It has never been published on a Sunday.

I can't find the event on the date it happened

Before the days of the telegraph and telephone, events were reported days or weeks afterwards because of the time taken for news to reach Edinburgh – so keep this in mind when you are looking at your results.

I can't seem to save the whole article as one image

Due to technical reasons, each article is split into chunks, and is unfortunately not held as one large single image. To preserve a copy of a full article, it would be easiest to print a hard copy of the article on paper.

When I print an article, I only get the first page

This is due to the website being built in 'frames' - the article body lives within a frame, which can be confusing. If you use printing options in your web browser, make sure to use "only print this frame" or a similar option. Using our "Print this Article" button should get round this, however.

You may find occasional printing issues with the newest versions of the Firefox web browser, which will be resolved as soon as possible.

What are the terms of use for the Digital Archive?

The terms and conditions relating to the Digital Archive, and the scotsman.com network, can be found here.

I am still having problems

If you have tried all of these suggestions, please remember it is possible nothing was published on what you are looking for. You are also searching an archive created from original newspapers and the quality of the original paper itself can affect searchability.

If you wish additional help please contact Archive Support.