Participating in digitised newspapers and more…

Why should I correct the electronically translated text?

Trove searches across the electronically translated text. Much of this text has not been translated accurately due to the poor quality of old newspapers. By correcting the electronically translated text, Trove is immediately able to retrieve better search results for users. Corrections should be made to match the text that was originally published (without formatting).

How do I correct the electronically translated text?

Correcting the electronically translated text refers to changing the text in the left hand column to match the text as it was originally printed. Text corrections are saved to the database and will improve the service for all users by increasing the accuracy of search results. Below are instructions for how to correct the text. We have further guidelines on the specific ways to fix the text here.

Only the text as it appears can be changed. Changes that do not improve the accuracy of the text for searching (e.g. specifying formatting) are not currently supported.

Getting Started

  • To open the edit mode, click Fix this Text. You will then be able to make your changes.
  • When you have finished click Save & Exit to save your changes and exit the edit mode.
  • Click Save if you wish to save your changes and continue editing. For long articles it is recommended that you save every 10-15 lines.
  • Click Cancel to discard changes made since the last Save and exit the edit mode.
  • Single letters, words, lines or entire articles can be corrected.
  • In older newspapers, the long ‘s’ (appears as an ‘f’ without the crossbar) may be replaced with a lower case ‘s’.

Special Characters

  • To add special characters (e.g. £) to the electronically translated text use the special characters button.
  • For characters not in the list:
  • Windows users:
    • Open Character Map (Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Character Map), navigate to the character, click on the character, click ‘select’, then copy and paste into the electronically translated text; or
    • If there is a keystroke displayed in the lower right corner of the character map, e.g. Alt+0163, hold down Alt and type the numerals on the numeric keypad to insert the characters into the text.
  • Macintosh Users:Place the cursor in the correct location, open ‘Special Characters’ (Edit -> Special Characters), navigate to the character, select the character, click insert.

Keyboard shortcuts

To speed up the editing process, you can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through the text and save your changes. Keyboard behaviour depends on your browser but in general:

  • TAB allows you to move to the next line while Shift-TAB allows you to move to the previous line.
  • Enter allows you to move to the next line.
  • Up and Down arrow keys also allow you to move from line to line.
  • Left and Right arrows allow you to move within a line or a text area. Use the Home and End keys to position the cursor at the beginning and end of the input field respectively.
  • F12 allows you to move from word to word.
  • Windows: Alt + s focuses the Save button, Alt + e focuses the Exit/Save & Exit button and Alt + x focuses the Cancel button. Hit Enter to perform the action. (These rely on browser “access key” functionality and may not work with all browsers.)
  • MacOS X: Ctrl + s is equivalent to Save, Ctrl + e to Exit/Save & Exit and Ctrl + x to Cancel.

Missing Text

If you come across an article with missing text, please add the missing text to the preceding line. As you type you may reach the text limit, click the add missing text link to allow you to add any missing text into the current text field (this feature is for registered users only).

Multi-page articles

You can only correct mistakes on the page the system is showing. If an article spans over 2 or more pages, save any changes on the current page then go to the appropriate page by clicking on the On page… link before correcting that page.

Searching on your changes

Although your changes will be immediately applied to the article, it may be several hours before the search index is updated. Hence your updates may not be immediately found by a search.

Are there guidelines on how to specifically fix the text?

We have excellent guidelines to assist volunteer text correctors on how to specifically fix things like hyphens, dashes, names in order to provide consistency in the way the text is corrected.

Adding new lines

It is not possible to insert additional lines of text. When logged in to your account and correcting the text, you can extend lines of text by adding the missing words to the end of the preceding line. If there is no preceding line, add the text to the start of the following line. Where possible make sure that the start of each line matches the start of the original line of text.

Changing your username

Once a username has been selected it may not be changed.

How can I change my password?

To change your password, go to the ‘forgot password’ form, fill in the boxes and click ‘submit’. This will send you an email containing a link to a form that allows you to change your password.

Contacting other users of this project

Unfortunately due to privacy issues we are unable to put users in touch with each other.

We have, however, implemented an online discussion forum to allow users to contact each other. To sign up for the forums, simply be logged into Trove and click on the ‘forum’ link at the top of the page. For further information about using the forums, check the Trove forum FAQ.

Comments – what are they? and how to use them

Comments are notes or annotations that may be added to an article. These can contain additional information about the subject of the article; link to related articles; link to related items from other collections or elsewhere in Trove; or provide correct or alternative spellings for terms in the article.

Comments may be public or private, with private comments intended to allow researchers to make notes that they find useful, but are not necessarily of use to other users of Trove. Both private and public comments are bound by the terms of use.

It is not necessary to add a public comment where an article requires text correction. If you wish to identify these articles so that you can come back to correct them at a later stage a private comment or tag may be more appropriate.

Deleting comments

You may only delete a comment that you have added, if you find a comment that you believe is in breach of the Trove terms of use please contact us.

To delete a comment, access the article that you have added the comment to, open the comments in the left-hand column, and click ‘remove’. To edit a comment instead, click ‘edit’.

Deleting empty lines

Currently there is no way to remove blank lines from articles.

Tags – what are they? and how to use them

Tags are keywords or labels, which may be public or private, added by users to newspaper articles. They help you and other users find articles later. A tag can be anything you want it to be, for example, it could describe a topic, a place, an event, a person, a feeling, your research progress. A newspaper article on the opening of the Sydney Opera House could be tagged with any of the following by users and a lot more besides:

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House – Opening event

Jorn Utzon

modern architecture

ceramic tiles

Queen Elizabeth II

Inspiring

Exciting

not read

text correction complete

reading list

To view all articles that have been associated with a particular tag, select the tag from any screen where the tag appears as a link. Tags may also be searched for, as described in Search Tips.

Deleting tags

When logged into Trove you may delete tags that you have added. Tags added by other people, or anonymously, may not be deleted.

To delete a tag, you need to be logged into Trove, and access the article that you wish to delete the tag from. To delete a tag, click on the small ‘x’ that appears next to a tag.

How frequently is the corrected text updated in a newspaper?

Due to the re-indexing process of the database, it may take up to 5 minutes before a search on the new, corrected text finds the corrected article.

I am having trouble signing up to the service, it won’t accept my name.

The username must be between 4 and 32 characters long can contain only alphabetic characters, digits, dashes (-) and full stops(.). The username must start with an alphabetic character and may not contain spaces or be already registered. You must accept the terms of use to sign up.

I can’t edit the text, can I send you the information as a document?

Unfortunately it is not possible for us to import text supplied to as as a document into Trove. We are not able to use any documents you send us.

I have corrected the text ‘horsos’ in an article to ‘horses’, why does a search for ‘horsos’ bring up the article that was corrected?

As an anti-vandalism measure, corrected text does not overwrite the original text of the article. Both the corrected text and the original text are indexed and searched.

What is the difference between correcting the electronically translated text and adding comments?

Correcting the electronically translated text makes changes to the electronically translated text in the database and improves accuracy of searching across terms for other people. The electronically translated text should exactly match what is printed on the newspaper page.

Comments allow users to provide further information about the events described in an article, or state if they believe there is journalistic error in the original article. Both comments and the electronically translated text are searched.

Why is the electronically translated text corrected on a line-by-line basis?

Each line of the electronically translated text is linked to a location on the article image. Line-by-line correction maintains these links, allowing clicking of the text to move the article image to that location on the screen (synchronisation).

Why is text correction disabled on some articles?

Some articles have been identified as having specific processing errors, for example the column structure is incorrect. Text correction has been temporarily disabled on these articles since they will be re-processed and re-loaded to Trove over the next few months.