Following you will find a few helpful notes regarding the nature of the Saskatchewan Historic Newspapers Online (SHNO) collection so that you can understand how best to navigate its resources and its limitations.
Searching
Searches can be performed upon a variety a descriptors within the collection. Currently, searches can be conducted on keywords within the newspaper name and within article headlines, as well as by the community associated with the newspaper and the repository of the newspaper holdings. These search parameters can be narrowed down after the search is conducted, or can be combined during the initial search by using the '+' symbol located next to the search box.
In the future we hope to enrich the search functions to include the full text of the newspapers (which is reliant on the Optical Character Recognition), as well as to implement a controlled vocabulary of subject headings.
Browsing
The collection can be also be browsed by the community associated with the newspaper. Communities are listed alphabetically, and results can be further narrowed down by newspaper title and then by year of publication.
In the future we hope to enrich the browse functions to include a dynamic map of communities with associated newspapers, as well as a timeline that will allow browsing by the publication date of individual newspaper issues and show publication ranges.
Caveats Regarding this Resource
Finally, the caveats regarding this resource. The SHNO collection is composed of digitized images of microfilmed copies of the original newspapers. The digital images you see here are, in essence, two renditions away from the original material. Therefore, the image quality can sometimes be less than ideal, depending on the state of the original newsprint and the quality of the microfilm image. If you come across an image that is unreadable you may contact the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan to see if a better image can be sourced, but often the case will be that this is the best that we have. Also, due to the nature of the original typesetting, the newspapers' physical condition during filming, and the image quality, the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is often not as optimal as it is on modern documents.