Performing research with online historical newspaper collections is a challenge unto itself, especially considering that the source material (sometimes over a hundred year old newsprint) creates an unreadable index.

But another challenge is sufficient downloading of a "found" article or page that you wish to keep. Unfortunately, the software suppliers provide  different ways to download the article or page that you want.

Below is a link to a Quick Reference Guide that provides what you need to consider before you download, so that you can read the article or page that you downloaded, and also find the article again in the future.. To obtain the one-page Quick Reference Guide pdf for easy reference, you can view or download it by clicking on the link  below.

When searching old newspapers, there are some things you should try (Do's) and things that you shouldn't try (Don'ts).  Pat attention to this list and you will be much more successful:

• DO Misspell search criteria words on purpose. The OCR process tries to create letters from dots, not words
• DO Search in the nearest big city or county seat
• DO Add the word(s) beloved, dear, or loving to help find obituaries
• DO a search with syllables rather than whole words to take advantage of the significant use of hyphenated words in older newspapers
• DO take advantage of free trials with subscription newspaper sites before you buy
• DO use abbreviations, such as Wm,  Jos, Eliz, Ave, or Sgt, etc. in your search criteria
• DO search for husbands name with Mrs. for married women
• DO a search for a few weeks prior to death date in the newspaper for hospitalization, illness or accident - helps determine the cause of death
• DO try to exchange a "b" for an "h", or a "c" for an "e' and many other combinations since they are very similar to the OCR process many times
• DO search for a street address. You might be surprised.
• DON'T just select a newspaper subscription database just because it's on sale
• DON'T assume that the newspaper collection has what you want just because the title is from your chosen city or town. Check the collection's date range
• DON'T search just surnames
• DON'T just search U.S. newspapers based on ethnicity. Search newspapers in the person's homeland
• DON'T rush out and purchase a subscription to newspaper collections. Libraries often subscribe to the same pay sites and if you have a library card, you may be able to search from home.
• DON'T assume that because an obituary states someone is a "native of" that it means that they were born there.

People often are recorded in old newspapers with a nickname instead of their given name.  There are countless examples; often used are Bill for William, Jack for John, Liz for Elizabeth, etc. Make sure that you not only search for "William Jones", but also with a given name, such as Bill, Will, or Willie. You will get lots more results.  Here is a list of common ones. 

• Abraham - Abe, Abra
• Alexander - Alec, Alex
• Archibald - Arch, Archie
• Augustus - Augie
• Bartholomew - Bart, Bat
• Cornelius - Con
• Cyrus - Cy
• Richard - Dick
• Phineas - Finney
• August - Gus
• Harold, Henry - Hal
• Hamilton - Ham
• Henry - Hank
• Henry - Harry
• Hiram - Hy
• Isaac - Ike
• Jackson, John - Jack
• Jacob - Jake
• Jedidiah  - Jed
• Christopher - Kit 
• Malachi, Malcolm - Mal 
• Nathaniel - Nat, Nate
• Edwin, Edward - Ned
• Newton - Newt
• Oliver - Olli
• Patrick - Paddy
• Alexander - Sandy
• Josiah, Cyrus - Si
• Thaddeus - Tad
• Virgil - Virg
• Wiley, William - Willie
• Abigail, Tabitha - Abbie, Abby
• Alice - Allie
• Elizabeth - Bess, Betsey
• Caroline - Callie, Carrie
• Clarissa, Clarinda - Clara
• Dorothy - Dolly, Dot
• Edith - Edie
• Alice - Elsie
• Henrietta, Louetta - Etta
• Frances - Fanny, Frankie
• Florence - Flora, Flossie
• Harriet - Hatty, Hattie
• Janet, Virginia - Jenny 
• Katherine, Kathleen - Kate, Kay 
• C/Katherine - Kitty
• Charlotte - Lollie, Lottie 
• Margaret, Margery - Madge 
• Mary - Mamie
• Martha - Mattie
• Margaret - Meg, Maggie 
• Mindwell, Wilhelmina  - Mina
• Mary, Wilhelmina - Minnie 
• Martha, Mary, Amelia  - Mollie 
• Eleanor, Ellen, Helen - Nellie 
• Antoinette, Henrietta - Nettie 
• Martha - Patsy
• Martha, Patience - Patty
• Margaret - Peggy
• Mary - Polly
• Sarah - Sadie, Sally
• Winifred, Edwina - Winnie

Give it a try.  You will be surprised how many more search results that you get!

Everyone who has searched newspapers online will fail to find something. It happens incredibly often. 

I have often heard researchers say “I can’t find a single article about a person or an event, even though I have searched for hours!”

Laying competency aside as a factor, the biggest reason is that scanning of one and two hundred year old newspapers, either from paper or from microfilm, produces way less than optimal results.

More importantly, one must know that searching through an index created by humans who have read the source material and then typed the index is far superior to having a machine/software scan and process a dusty old newspaper. Yet the massive size of newspaper collections prevents the creation of the index manually. You must expect inferior results and set your expectations accordingly.

Please take a look at the following list, and hopefully some of these errors and anomalies will provide you with some hints to overcome them and actually find what you are looking for. There are many others – but these are ones that I have personally experienced:
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1. Hyphenated words were often used because of fixed width type as well as the experience and capability of the typesetter. Hyphens are less utilized today but were a staple years ago. Take that into consideration if you are searching for a surname or other search criteria with many letters in one word. Try splitting the search into two words where the hyphen may have been normally used.
2. If there is an “h” in your search term, try exchanging a “b”, since b’s and h’s are quite similar and can “confuse” the OCR process. As an example, searching the California Digital Newspaper Collection for one of my surnames – “Braunhart” yields 1,507 results. Replacing the “h” with a “b”, hence searching for “Braunbart” yields 96 results – for the SAME person. That is approximately another 6%!
3. For a similar reason as “h” and “b” are confused – the same holds true of “c” and “e”.  I have not had as many difficulties with this pair as with “h” and “b”.
4. Likewise, lower case m’s and n’s are often confused. The m’s are often converted to several combinations of letters.  Also r’s and n’s can be confused.
5. I’s in lower as well as upper case can often be converted to slashes or exclamation points and the numeral 1. And vice versa.​
6. if the original newspaper is “dirty,” by that I mean there is excessive ink or the scan is dark – many times spaces will be scanned but not presented as spaces. There are a variety of strange characters that may be picked up.
7. If the newspaper was scanned and then processed directly with OCR, that is one pass. If the newspaper was scanned to microfilm and scanned again and then OCR’d that is two passes. Thus a two pass operation has the potential to have a decreased quality of results. There isn’t much that you can do about it – but it is nice to know.

So don’t be discouraged by “lack of results” from doing online newspaper searches. You just need to “outsmart” OCR and try various combinations to get to those elusive ancestors. Be persistent.

A crowdsourcing example that I personally have used is that of correction on the actual online newspaper site, such as the aforementioned California Digital Newspaper Collection. In this example, registered users can provide edited text that is then incorporated into future searches. Kind of like a newspaper-related “pay it forward.” This capability is provided on that site and many others from the fine folks at DL Consulting who created the software used by the California collection as well as many other online newspaper sites.

For many more details about scanning, OCR and related subjects please read 
an old article that is very informative -  Analysing and Improving OCR Accuracy in Large Scale Historic Newspaper Digitisation Programs, from the March/April 2009 publication of D-Lib magazine.

Good luck – be persistent and have reasonable expectations.