Sydney Morning Herald & Sun Herald Archives 1955-1990
I think this might have only just commenced, see http://archives.smh.com.au/
"Search every edition of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald between 1955-1990 in our unique online archive. All articles, captions and advertisements are fully keyword searchable and full-text results are returned in an exact digital reproduction of the printed pages as they were originally published. Search birth, death and marriage notices. Explore Australia's history through the big stories of the day.
The SMH archives contains 820,000 pages in almost 13,000 issues spanning January 1st, 1955 to December 31st, 1990. The contents of all issues are fully text searchable and reflect the full context and layout of each page as it was originally published."
A very similar setup to ‘The Scotsman’ in that the free online search produces a list of dates and, not necessarily helpful, partial clippings. Even though the current range of years is much smaller pricing appears vaguely similar to ‘The Scotsman’. (i.e. expensive). There are no plans at present to extend the period covered.
If you can access a library (in particular an Australian library) you may be able to get full access this database free of charge, so it’s probably best to check before you start laying out the cash.
If your library has only microfilm copies you may be able to establish the date of the event you are looking for by using the free online search at home. Using ‘Advanced Search’ it is theoretically possible to locate or narrow down dates for things such as pre Ryerson funeral notices etc. but image readability for OCR will probably reduce its effectiveness here. Remember that these notices may start with the surname.
Alan
Sydney Morning Herald Archives Online
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Currie
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Anne H
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Currie
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Hello Anne,
Last week I made up a list of all the deaths I had obtained from the NSW BDM index in the 1955 to 1976 period, from the Sydney area, and for which I did not already have newspaper notices. I started to check these against the free search and soon realised that it would be worthwhile investing some money in the project. So I bought a week’s access to the Sydney Morning Herald 1955-90 Archives for A$25 (about US$20 or UK10).
I rechecked the list and in the days remaining I checked every other name I could think of. I found information on about 90 individuals, for about 60 of these I picked up birth or marriage or death/funeral notices totalling about 90, for the other 30 individuals there were legal notices and other articles totalling over 50. Included was an almost forgotten family tragedy and stories of police corruption.
The death/funeral notices included names of children, often with married names, grandchildren, date and place of death and burial etc. This extra detail means that you can pick up even more info from the NSW Indexes (and even from other places such as the Australian War Memorial) especially for children born after 1906 (or 1918 at the library) whose existence would otherwise be hidden.
A trip to the library would have cost almost as much just for petrol and parking. The SMH Archive can be very good value if you do plenty of preparation and are reasonably certain you will get plenty of results. The free search is quite useful and careful use of it will give you a good idea of what your results will be. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the actual article you’re looking for will pop up in the snippet view.
Anyone trying it out should be careful to check that the image they are saving is all there as the page segments are further segmented and you may not save all of the image. In some cases a screen shot may be easier. Watch for a ‘Continue’ button at the bottom of the screen which sometimes appears when browsing otherwise you may not see some parts of the image.
As for me, I probably won’t be returning to the site for quite some time as I think I’ve milked it dry.
All the best,
Alan
Last week I made up a list of all the deaths I had obtained from the NSW BDM index in the 1955 to 1976 period, from the Sydney area, and for which I did not already have newspaper notices. I started to check these against the free search and soon realised that it would be worthwhile investing some money in the project. So I bought a week’s access to the Sydney Morning Herald 1955-90 Archives for A$25 (about US$20 or UK10).
I rechecked the list and in the days remaining I checked every other name I could think of. I found information on about 90 individuals, for about 60 of these I picked up birth or marriage or death/funeral notices totalling about 90, for the other 30 individuals there were legal notices and other articles totalling over 50. Included was an almost forgotten family tragedy and stories of police corruption.
The death/funeral notices included names of children, often with married names, grandchildren, date and place of death and burial etc. This extra detail means that you can pick up even more info from the NSW Indexes (and even from other places such as the Australian War Memorial) especially for children born after 1906 (or 1918 at the library) whose existence would otherwise be hidden.
A trip to the library would have cost almost as much just for petrol and parking. The SMH Archive can be very good value if you do plenty of preparation and are reasonably certain you will get plenty of results. The free search is quite useful and careful use of it will give you a good idea of what your results will be. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the actual article you’re looking for will pop up in the snippet view.
Anyone trying it out should be careful to check that the image they are saving is all there as the page segments are further segmented and you may not save all of the image. In some cases a screen shot may be easier. Watch for a ‘Continue’ button at the bottom of the screen which sometimes appears when browsing otherwise you may not see some parts of the image.
As for me, I probably won’t be returning to the site for quite some time as I think I’ve milked it dry.
All the best,
Alan
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Anne H
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