Early Amer. Newspapers [was: Online Text News]

[Joel S. Berson]

I do not recall who made the offer of receiving feedback, but there
is Mr. Golden:
Vincent Golden
Curator of Newspapers and Periodicals
American Antiquarian Society
www.americanantiquarian.org
185 Salisbury St.
Worcester, MA  01609-1634

Joel

At 1/4/2006 11:55 AM, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Online Text News
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I think it is very useful to test a database by its ability to
>retrieve known items, in addition to noting the number of false
>retrievals.
>
>I have been using the EAN database recently looking for additional
>stories relating to people or incidents in my notes.  There have been
>a number of occasions when I have failed to find the story I had
>started out with, and at least a few occasions where I failed to find
>the story although there were other stories from that paper on the
>same day.  Yesterday, I was looking for "James Gale, a Taylor".
>Nothing turned up under "James Gale", but I found the story I was
>starting from when I searched "Gale, a Taylor".  I'm still learning
>its eccentricities, and I may get better results when I have learned
>how to outwit it.  (Not a positive feature, of course.)
>
>I want to run through my notes up through 1820, at least.  Before I
>decalare that exisiting items have been missed, I will need to check
>the items I failed to find, to see whether the paper from the year in
>question has been digitized.  I will also need to recheck my ntoes, to
>be sure that there isn't a fatal error there.
>
>So far, I certainly wouldn't call the EAN database "worthless", but it
>certainly seems inconsistent.  It's good for what it does, but doesn't
>replace actually reading the newspapers (although it will replace
>actually reading the newspapers, of course).  I'm not paying for it,
>either -- there is a question of how many $1000s a year our libraries
>should pay for an inconsistent database, even if it isn't a worthless
>one.
>
>The slowness of the response is also an annoyance.
>
>One immediate change I would make: There is a list of newspapers
>included, by state, with a note as to the total number of issues
>digitized.  I would like to see that list include both the county and
>town of publication (perhaps with a parallel list arranged by town)
>and the specific years covered.  There should also be somewhere in the
>file a way of determining whether a year's file is complete, and if
>not, exactly what issues are missing.
>
>Joel S. Berson: who was your contact at the Antiquarian Society in
>this matter?
>
>GAT
>
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
>Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>Date: Wednesday, January 4, 2006 10:13 am
>Subject: Re: Online Text News
>
> > Fred,
> >
> > Have you given comments to the American Antiquarian Society?  When I
> > used EAN for the first time there last spring, they expressed
> > interest in receiving feedback.
> >
> > Are you really finding 95% false hits?  (I assume you mean false
> > positives.)  Have you uncovered any false negatives?  (A more
> > difficult task.)
> >
> > I find an annoying number of false positives, but nowhere near
> > 95%.  (My biggest gripe would be its very slow response.)  And I have
> > certainly had successes--for example, finding advertisements for
> > exhibitions of camels in the northern colonies between 1735 and 1790;
> > finding dancing-masters from 1704 to 1750.
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > At 1/4/2006 09:03 AM, you wrote:
> > >I forgot to mention that Gale is also working on an online
> > collection of
> > >19th-century newspapers, probably American in focus.  Hopefully
> > this will
> > >be better than the worthless (95% false hits in my experience) Early
> > >American Newspapers from Readex.
> > >
> > >Fred Shapiro
> >