I signed up a few weeks ago after a free trial, and “cleaned” my computer last night. When I tried to sign on, it not only made me change my password, but said I no longer had a paid subscription and therefore could not travel down that rabbit hole.
Does anyone else have a subscription, and if so, have you had this problem? I did send them an e-mail, FWIW.
I do have it. Keep in mind your free trial doesn’t last forever, although it does auto renew if you don’t cancel the subscription. But to answer your question, I have it and it hasn’t been an issue.
This is the first I’m hearing about newspapers.com. Can anyone offer some insights on it?
Asking for personal experiences is really moe of an IMHO thing. Moving.
I have it, but I always paid for it so don’t know what happens after a free trial. And I haven’t “cleaned” my computer, whatever that means.
There are two major newspaper database services, newspapers.com (news) and newspaperarchive.com (archive). I use both because my research is heavily dependent on reports in old newspapers. The two overlap greatly, but not completely, in the papers they’ve scanned so for thoroughness both are necessary.
The vast majority of their papers are from smaller communities. They do have larger newspapers from large cities, but it’s rare that they have more than one per city. Neither has the NY Times or the Washington Post, e.g. Their search is formatted differently. Archive has many more options in its search panel, but results are very haphazard. It recently added an obituary button to aid genealogical searches.
I prefer newspapers.com, but that’s partly because I pay for the upgrade to get extra newspapers, mostly big ones. Even so, I find it more reliable and its OCR scanning is better. Its thumbnails reveal more about the actual page.
But as with any tool, you have to learn how to make it work best for your needs, and your needs may work better with one over the other.
Oh, and I have a swivel monitor that can be put into portrait mode so I can see a full newspaper page. I’ve tried using them on a laptop and that drove me insane. YMMV
I have had both but now just use newspaperarchive. For some work I was doing a year ago the other service had better coverage. I haven’t had any problems. In fact they are among the most robust subscriptions I have in the sense that they never seem to require logging in, it’s always saved.
As for insights each service has a search page where you can search anywhere from a single issue to the entire city/state/country for keywords. Results are easily saved as JPG or PDF. Both offer free two weeks trials. I have found some remarkable things. One of the neatest is that my grandfather was a “correspondent” in WWI. Grandma sent his frequent letters describing life on the Western front and the local paper printed them all. I had no idea gramps could write like that, they are insightful and humorous.
Small town newspapers are extremely gossipy as it turns out. If your family lived in the town you will find mentions of every visit, hospital stay, accident and what have you. I showed some photos to my uncle of him and a woman friend in the Guys and Dolls Club. He exclaimed, “I had forgotten all about her!”. To which my aunt replied, “I haven’t…”
Dennis
I found the problem. I had signed up for a free trial a while back, but couldn’t do a second trial under the same e-mail address, so I used one that I rarely use nowadays.
Going to that address, and following the bread crumbs, solved the problem.
I use it occasionally - via my public library, without having to subscribe.