Searching is the most obvious way to find those nuggets of information in our vast collection! But another, just as useful, path through the collection is by browsing!
The new site offers some familiar functionality in regards to browsing but adds some cool new tricks that’ll make your explorations deeper! Let’s look at the Titles menu option.
This page is similar to the current site but loads much much faster! Now you can jump to the first letter of your desired title using the alphabetical menu at the top.
Let’s click on the Adirondack Daily Enterprise as an example. This page is similar to the current landing pages titles except rather than getting the nitty gritty librarian-friendly metadata about the title, you get the information we think you’ll need the most about this title.
For example, we’ve included the “Years in Publication” which is the years the paper printed according to the Library of Congress. This is clearly different than “Available Online” which is the dates we have in our collection. This information was available on the current site but visitors often confused these. Hopefully, this is much clearer!
Other fields to note on this page is “Chronicling America Listing” and “Physical Location Listing”. The “Chronicling America Listing” will have a link to the Library of Congress’ information page about this title. This is where you can find all that sweet metadata you might be craving! The “Physical Location Listing” links to the New York State Library’s listing of each title and what organizations in NYS have microfilm or paper copies available. If we don’t have a particular issue of this title, this is where you begin your hunt to find real copies to look at!
From this screen, you can jump to a particular decade and then a specific year and month. You can also search this title specifically from here.
Next let’s look at the Dates menu option. This provides an easy way to jump to a particular decade, then year, then month. You then get a calendar view that’ll show every title that published an issue on that particular day. While we might not have a lot of issues in the 1700’s there’s a lot to look at from 1810 onwards! If you want to see what people were talking about 25 years, 50 years or 100 years ago this week this Dates menu is the place to start!
Lastly, let’s look at the Collections menu option. Unlike Titles and Dates, Collections is a new way to browse our collection we’ve not had before. We’re excited about this and our partners will be too. The NYSHN web site relies heavily on the materials and support of academic libraries, public libraries, public library systems, school library systems, museums, historical societies and individuals across this state. And while we always publicly acknowledged their support whenever we could it was hard to make sure each partner’s contribution was seen by our visitors. Collections gives us a more direct way to show off these contributions. On this screen you’ll find the names of each partner with a link to landing page which contains thumbnails and links to each title they contributed to. You can also visit the partner’s web site or search through their contributions directly.
Now that you’ve seen some familiar paths and a new path through our collection we hope you’ll take the time to see what history has to offer just off your usual search path! Next time we’ll be look at another new feature: user accounts! This brings the ability to view your search history, save results and share them!