The Gale Group’s The Times Digital Archive, 1785‐1985 is the first in a planned Historic Newspaper series that will provide online access to the vast microfilm resources available from its imprint Primary Source Microfilm. When completed, this project will be a comprehensive source for British historical and cultural studies. Gale is in the process of digitizing every page of The Times (London), excluding the Sunday Times, for a 200‐year period and making the articles, advertisements, and other sections of the newspaper fully searchable and accessible in Adobe PDF format. As of August 2002, the years 1930 to 1950 have been added to the database, and the company intends to add approximately ten years both forward and backward each month until they have included the entire contemporary and historical content. Users who have previously had to wade through the printed index to The Times and fumble with microfilm readers will find this database an invaluable aid to their research, and academic or special libraries supporting large programs in the humanities will find this online archive well worth the licensing fees.
Based on the 20‐year span of The Times currently loaded in the database, this reviewer was impressed with the quality of the images and with the various search options offered. Users can browse the issues online and view the pages of each issue or full‐screen PDF page portraits of various sizes. The images are sharp and legible, and the display format Gale has chosen enables users to view the articles in their proper context. Navigating through the various pages is a relatively straightforward process. Article titles as well as headers for advertisements appear as hyperlinks on the right, and when users move the mouse over the title, a box indicating the location of that article on the page image appears. Clicking on the link pulls up a larger image of the page with the article highlighted, and the links to other articles starting on the same page and in the same category of the newspaper (advertising, book reviews, City, the Court Page, crossword puzzle, government, law, letters to the editor, obituaries, sport, and theatre) are conveniently located at the bottom of the screen. The print options include reformatting the article to print within the browser or opening the article in Adobe Acrobat Reader.
The database also offers a sophisticated search engine, which provides several different points of access to the article content. The Relevance Search uses a Web search engine‐style algorithm to rank articles based on the number of occurrences and placement of the keywords entered. Users can specify whether the words are to appear in the citations or in the full text of the article. As in Web search engines, plus (+) and minus (‐) signs function as implied Boolean operators in Relevance Search mode. Below the search form are limits for date (before, on, after, or between a range) and limits to specific sections of The Times (advertising, business, editorial and commentary, features, news, people, and a picture gallery for photographs and line drawings). Researchers can also view the search history at the bottom of the page in a drop‐down menu. The results list includes thumbnail screen shots of the page on which the article occurs, with a box indicating its placement; users can then view the article alone, the whole newspaper page, or the PDF page portrait. Keyword Search resembles other Gale InfoTrac search pages, but Advanced Search gives users three search fields with drop‐down boxes to specify where the words should occur (author, text, or illustration) or to search by category or date. The advanced design and flexibility of the search features make this database an excellent online archival source for quick consultation or extensive historical inquiry.
The Times Digital Archive is but one of many digitization initiatives Gale is developing from its Primary Source Microfilm catalog. Although these databases are all subscription sites, they offer a great alternative to microform sets for users who want to search and access the content with a few clicks of the mouse. For libraries that do not own microfilm copies of The Times or are seeking to free up space by moving the many linear feet of film boxes to storage, a digital version of this historical resource would be a great asset. Even those institutions that already have the film may want to explore this and other Gale databases as a way of opening up their often underutilized holdings to a new generation of scholars and even casual readers.
