FAQs
Searching
- Which editions are missing?
- How do I search?
- How do I narrow my results?
- I only want to search front pages?
- How do I search for papers from a certain date or date range?
- How do I sort the results?
- How do I search Documents offline?
Results
- What controls are available on the search results page?
- What is the preview page?
- Bookshelf - How do I store a result for future use?
- Why is the image quality of some of the pages so crisp when many pages display with rough pixels?
- What are the advantages to having Page PDF files rather than ‘picture’ files?
Payments
- How much does public access cost?
- Can my University buy access?
- I have created an account. How do I activate my account?
- How do I buy access to one or more archive titles?
Copyright
Browsers
Searching
Which editions are missing?
It would be great if every edition of every old newspaper had been preserved, even better if they had been preserved in perfect condition.
Sadly, we can't always find a copy of some editions (or a run of editions). It can be frustrating to look for the Newspaper from a specific date only to find that it isn't there, so to help you identify the periods where UKPressonline is not as complete as we would like we will keep the following list as up-to-date as possible:
Missing Editions Status:
The Daily Express
Missing: 1905; 1911 (we have obtained most of these and will be adding to the archive as a priority);
Missing (no known surviving copy):11 April 1941; 30 March 1945; 10 May 1945.
Incomplete: 1900; 1902; 1915; 1917; 1918 (mostly found and being processed); 1957; 1958; 1959; 1960; 1961.
Missing due to Strike Action: 10-14 June 1970; 1 Mar 1971; 18 Mar 1971.
The Daily Mirror
We are currently in the middle of a program to recover a large number of missing editions from a total of around 1,000 missing from 106 years. We have found around 700 editions, added around 100 of them in February and will be working to add the rest to the archive as soon as we have received them. We will post more specific information here when it is available.
How do I search?
Users can currently search the UKPressOnline database for pages of the Daily Express from 1900 and Daily Mirror from 1903 (when the titles were launched) until today; just type a search term (e.g. Blair) into the Search box on the Home page and the database will tell you how many pages there are on which this term was mentioned and show you thumbnails of the most-relevant eight pages.
Note that, if you search for Blair, you’ll find Sir Ian Blair, Lionel Blair and The Blair Witch Project, as well as Tony Blair; if you want only the ex-Prime Minister, your search term should be Tony Blair. If you are not a registered user with UKPressOnline or haven’t logged in with your Username and Password, you can see only the thumbnails. If you want to see more, or do an Advanced Search – multiple search terms, date search, front/back pages only, see Preview pages and scroll through editions, create your own Bookshelf or Download/use full PDF pages – you have to Register and logon.
How do I narrow my results?
If you search for Tony Blair, the database will find all pages on which the exact term Tony Blair is mentioned; it will ignore any mentions where the writer may have referred to the ex-Prime Minister (albeit disparagingly, perhaps) as simply Blair. Using the advanced search screen there is the option to add extra search criteria – e.g. Tony Blair and George Bush and Jack Straw and Iraq; this will return only pages that mention all of these names. Each of the added search boxes further gives the option to amend its Boolean operative – and, or and not so, if you want every page that mentions Blair or Bush, Search for Tony Blair, change the drop-down operative from and to or, and type in George Bush. If you want only those Tony Blair pages that have nothing to do with George Bush, change the operative to not. You can use any combination of these; if you find you need more criteria, please let us know.
I only want to search front pages?
The database defaults search in to Body Content - i.e. search all pages of every edition; Change this drop-down to Front Page to restrict the search to front pages only. If you’re looking for David Beckham but don’t want football reports, you can save a lot of time by restricting your search to front pages only.
How do I search for papers from a certain date or date range?
You can opt to search for a specific date or for newspapers within a range of dates by entering the Date from and Date to fields on the advanced search screen. Dates can be entered directly as text DD/MM/YYYY (Day, Month, Year) or you can click on the calendar icon beside the date boxes to pick the date/s required from a pop-up calendar; the upper left/right arrowheads on these calendars scroll from year to year; the lower arrowheads scroll from month to month.
Note: If you simply want to find and scroll through an edition or range of editions without entering any search text click By date alone. When used in combination with setting Search in to Front page and Sort by to Oldest edition this is a powerful tool when finding coverage of major events.
How do I sort the results?
UKPressOnline defaults to returning all found pages in order of relevance – ie, pages with the most mentions of your search criteria; if you want your pages in latest to oldest date order change the Sort by drop down to most recent edition, alternatively if you want the reverse date order choose oldest edition.
How do I search Documents offline?
Once you have downloaded the PDF files of pages, you don’t need to be connected to UKPressOnline or even to the Internet to search through them; you can use Acrobat’s Advanced ‘Search/Find’ to search the text in the document you have open – or even in all PDF files in a directory on your computer at once.
Results
What controls are available on the search results page?
The first line on this page tells you how many hits your search has found – how many pages on which your search criteria appear. If this is too many (e.g. a search for Tony Blair and no other criteria will find thousands of hits, which will take an awful lot of your time to go through), you can click New/Refine Search, which will take you back to the search screen you last left, where you can refine your search by adding extra criteria. This option is present in all following screens. The next line shows your search criteria. Hits are shown as thumbnails with eight per view. Navigation control icons are provided for Next, Previous, First and Last results. The Title, Date of publication and Page number of each page appears above its thumbnail. Below each thumbnail, there are three options:
- Preview takes you to a new view of the whole, scrollable edition in which that page appears, with the thumbnail (and its facing page) slightly enlarged (see below). Note: clicking on a thumbnail has the same effect.
- Add puts the thumbnail into My Bookshelf, with a pop-up confirmation.
- Get PDF transfers the original, full-size PDF of the page to your desktop.
What is the preview page?
This view shows the thumbnail page and its facing page (where there is one – i.e. not Front or Back page) at roughly double the size of the thumbnail; as well as this, thumbnails of all of the pages in that edition are shown in spreads down the right-hand side. You can scroll backwards or forwards through the edition by choosing Previous or Next; you can also choose to Jump to a specific spread or to Front Page or Back Page. At each stage the chosen page appears in the main view in Preview size.
By clicking on the buttons under each thumbnail you have the following options:
- Add puts the thumbnail into My Bookshelf, with a pop-up confirmation.
- Get PDF transfers the original, full-size PDF of the page to your desktop.
- View opens up the page as a 100% JPG in a new window. Note: This is a full size picture of the page not a live-text PDF. When you are finished reading, close this window to go back to your search where you left it.
Search Result returns you to the thumbnail views, at the last set of thumbnails where you transferred to Preview.
Bookshelf - How do I store a result for future use?
Result thumbnails and their search context can be stored in My Bookshelf for future reference; if you log off and log back on, they will still be there.
The first line on this view shows how many pages you have on your Bookshelf. You can scroll through views of eight thumbnails (in the order in which you added them) and go to Preview, Download, Search Result or New/Refine Search, as before.
You can delete thumbnails from My Bookshelf by clicking Remove under the relevant thumbnail.
Why is the image quality of some of the pages so crisp when many pages display with rough pixels?
The “pre-computer” pages in UKPressOnline – from 1900 to 2001 – are scanned from the original paper editions and have been ‘OCR’d’ (Optical Character Recognition) to make the text available. These images are dependent on the quality of the original. From 2001, most (but not all) of the pages are in ‘Print’ format PDF – the actual computer files from which newspaper pages are now printed: as such, they give production-quality reproduction, both on-screen and on reprint.
What are the advantages to having Page PDF files rather than ‘picture’ files?
Picture files (TIFF, PICT, JPEG, GIF etc.) have no text content: a database of picture files allows you to search only by ‘keywords’ that have been applied to each picture by the database provider. We have made the entire original newspaper content fully searchable so you can search what was published, look at pages, download them and, using the power of Adobe Acrobat®, refine your searches or perform new ones – offline.
Payments
How much does public access cost?
You can buy access to UKPressOnline's archives from as little as £5.95 (plus VAT where applicable).
A 48-hour subscription to either the Daily Mirror (covering from 1903 to 1980) or to the Daily Express (covering from 1900 to the present-day) costs just £5.95 including VAT.
You can add the Daily Star (from £5.95 including VAT) or purchase access to the Express Group titles for up to a year at a time.
To see all of the available pricing options please register and check out the Shop.
Example prices:
Daily Mirror (1903-1980)
48 hrs: £5.95
10 Day: £10.95
Monthly: £25.85
Annual: £99.90
Daily Express (1900-current) and Sunday Express 21st Century
48 hrs: £5.95
10 Day: £12.95
Monthly: £29.90
Annual: £150.00
Daily and Sunday Star
5 day: £5.95
30 day: £12.95
Annual: £76.00
Daily Express Group - Express titles and Star titles (as above)
48 hrs: £5.95
10 Day: £12.95
Monthly: £38.00
Annual: £199.00
Please note that all prices are quoted inclusive of VAT.
Can my University buy access?
Universities and Further education Institutions can buy access for students and faculty.
The UKPressOnline Archives are available through JISC Collections.
Please see:
http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/catalogue/ukpressonline
I have created an account. How do I activate my account?
Your account is activated when you purchase access to one or more archive titles.
How do I buy access to one or more archive titles?
 The upgrade shop link... |
When logged in, Personal and Business account holders can use the Upgrade Shop facility to purchase titles. Click on the Shop link at the top of the screen to go directly to the upgrade shop.
Once in the upgrade shop you will see a list of packages tailored to your account.
 The upgrade shop... |
Click the Add to cart button next to the package of your choice. If you wish to add further packages you can return to the upgrade shop by pressing the Continue Shopping button.
If you change or delete a cart entry please press Update cart to action your change before continuing.
When you are satisfied that your cart contents are correct press the Checkout with PayPal button to begin the payment process. Note: You do not require a PayPal account to use this feature.
Library, Education and larger Business customers should contact the Subscriptions Desk directly.
Copyright
I want to use a photograph from a page I have downloaded. How do I go about it?
Contact Picture Desk with details of the photograph – the title and edition in which it appeared and a brief description. The photographic archives of the Daily Mirror are held by Mirrorpix and, wherever possible, we will do our best to find the image you are after, or a suitable alternative, as well as information on licensing. Please note however that it may not be possible to supply certain images for various reasons, including copyright being held by a third party.
Browsers
Which Internet Browsers are supported by UKPressOnline?
We have made great efforts to ensure compatibility with most Web Browsers, whether Windows, Mac or Unix/Linux-based. Firefox, MS Internet Explorer and Safari are recommended. If you have problems with your preferred browser, please email us at Technical Desk. For best performance we recommend allowing javascript and site cookies in your browser. UKPressonline has been designed to support operation without the use of cookies, however we do require javascript to be enabled.
If I have a technical query, what do I do?
For any technical problem, please email us at Technical Desk with us much detail[1] on the problem as you can supply; it helps if you can also supply any information on your own equipment that might be relevant – such as:
- Browser – eg, Internet Explorer? Do you know which version?
- Internet connection – eg, broadband? Company network?
- Your computer and its operating system – make, model?
- Connection – do you know if you go through a proxy or cache server?
For specific issues, any additional information that can assist us in recreating the problem would be appreciated.
- [1] Information is used only to diagnose your problem and will not be stored in any data-retrieval system after resolution, when all specific data will be deleted (apart from basic information about your request and actions taken by us.
Online Now
| Daily Mirror Archive | 1903 - current |
|---|---|
| Daily Express Archive | 1900 - current |
| Sunday Express Archive | 2000 - current |
| Daily Star Archive | 2000 - current |
| Daily Star Sunday Archive | 2002 - current |
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