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Frequently asked questions


Why is the response time sometimes so long, and why does my computer freeze sometimes?

Response time for the Richmond Daily Dispatch depends largely on two things: the file size you're browser is attempting to download and the speed of your Internet connection. Many files in the collection, particularly the page images, are very large and may take some time to appear when using slower (dial-up) connections, during which time it may seem that your computer/Web browser isn't doing anything. Please have patience, especially if you are connected via dial-up, or if you are using an older computer. If you repeatedly experience "crashing" or "freezing" when using our collection, please let us know here.

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Why aren’t there any newspapers available online between 1 April and 9 December 1865?

The Daily Dispatch was not printed during this time period. The government of the Confederate States of America evacuated Richmond at the beginning of April, after which time the city was burned and Federal troops arrived to occupy Richmond. The Dispatch ceased publication with the burning of the city. After months of rebuilding, publication resumed on 9 December. See the 9 December article for an description of the events surrounding the newspaper's hiatus.

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Why can’t I go directly from an article transcription to the image of that article from the actual newspaper?

The digital library system that the collection was built with does not have a feature that allows specific article images to be delivered to the user. We understand that this kind of functionality is useful in certain situations, particularly when searching specifically for primary source materials. However, we needed to work with existing microfilm images of the newspaper, and the image quality of some of the page images was such that automatic mapping of the of the images to break them down into individual articles and advertisements would be unreliable at best. Please be aware the University of Richmond did not design the system that runs this collection.

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What’s the easiest way for me to view the page image of the article I found?

The best way to navigate to a page image from a search result is to click on the "Table of contents" link, then on "View entire text and page images." This allows you to see the transcription of the text on screen, and the "Page 1" link at the top of the transcription allows the actual newspaper page image to be viewed. There will be no indication of which article you searched for (highlighting, outlining, etc.) so make sure you are aware of the article's headline before you view the image. For more details, see the help guide for accessing newspaper text.

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Why am I having trouble finding obituaries or birth and wedding announcements?

"Obituary" was not a term often used in newspapers during the time period. More often, and definitely in the Daily Dispatch, the heading "Died" was used instead. "Married" was used instead of "Wedding" or "Marriage Announcements." Births were not normally announced in the newspaper. If you have trouble locating an individuals name, try browsing a date range of "Died" or "Married" sections, as the actual date of the death or marriage may not have been the same date a notice was printed. A recently added feature to our collection allows searching of death and marriage announcements. Use the "search in" feature on the search page to employ this option. For more information and searching suggestions, see the genealogical and family history information page.

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Can I request copies of single articles?

At the present time this is not a service we are capable of offering due to time limitations and other demands on staff members. If future demand and staff availability is such that we need to explore this possibility we will do so. Please be aware that the page images are in the JPEG format, a widely used and accessible image format. Imaging software can be used to zoom to individual articles if the built in zoom feature is insufficient. While much of the content of the Daily Dispatch is in the public domain and can be freely used, the page images are owned by ProQuest Information and Learning. Please be aware that copyright restrictions may apply to the images, and all responsibility for copyright and use must be the assumed by our users.

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Why am I getting too many hits with my search terms?

The use of broad terms (e.g., ship) or a term that will be found often in the collection (e.g., should be avoided if you are finding too many hits. For example, a search for Richmond will retrieve thousands of items because not only does the word Richmond appear many times per issue and in the underlying metadata, but it also appears in the title of the newspaper. Using the Boolean "and" operator or the proximity search may be useful when confronted with overwhelming numbers of hits. Please see the help guide for more detailed information on conducting effective searches.

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Why am I getting too few hits with my search terms?

The use of narrow or modern terms and/or spellings may affect your search. Try to broaden your search by using less specific terms, or using synonyms, different spellings, wild cards and the Boolean operator "or" in your search. Please see the help guide for more detailed information on conducting effective searches.

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The result detail list indicates that there are three hits for my place name search, but they're actually all from the same location within the same article. What's going on?

This phenomenon is due to the layer of information that resides in the newspaper that is invisible to the user. Place names are "normalized" throughout the run of the Daily Dispatch, with locations identified by specific, regularized terms. For example, a place name search for "Norfolk" as a place name will often show two or three hits for the same single occurrence of Norfolk as a place name. If Norfolk appears in the text as "Norfolk City" there is underlying and invisible code that identifies it as "Norfolk City, Virginia" - this will allow each instance of "Norfolk City" within all of the texts to be linked together. While this functionality is not fully incorporated at this time, it is something that we are hopeful will be available in the future.

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Why do there appear to be so many typographical errors in the texts?

The text files were “transcribed” from the newspaper images, not created from an optical character recognition (OCR) software process. Although the text files were spell checked, many typos still remain. These resulted from either original typos in the newspaper, unclear words in the newspaper, or words that were “corrected” by the spell check process. Many place names and person names, although misspelled in the article text are “normalized” behind the scenes in the encoded metadata. These normalized spellings are not visible to the user but allow misspelled place and person names to be returned through searches. Because of the volume of text we have decided not to review each file and correct them at this time. This is an issue we hope to address in the future if funds and resources permit.

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Why aren’t the advertisements searchable for the newspaper I’m looking viewing?

Advertisements were not transcribed for each and every newspaper. This decision was made based on two factors - 1) that advertisements were, in general, reprinted for extended time periods, and 2) that the cost of transcribing duplicate advertisements for was prohibitive. Shortly after the project began the decision was made to restrict transcription of advertisements to the Monday of the second week of each month. While this is not always the case most months have at least one day of advertisements that are searchable. These days are easily recognized by visually scanning the browse pages for dates marked with an astrisk. Once an issue has been selected, use the "Search this text" feature at the top of the table of contents page to locate advertisements, or browse through the contents. Note: in addition to all news stories, some sections of the newspaper were transcribed for all available issues. These sections sections include these headings (or headings very similar to them): "Negro for Sale," "Servants for Sale or Hire," "Financial and Commercial," "Runaways," and "Military Notices."

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What’s the Bookbag all about and how do I use it?

The bookbag lets you select items as you search or browse collections and hold them for the duration of your search session. Item records in your bookbag can be saved to your desktop as a text file or emailed to any email address. You can also search items in your bookbag collectively, as well as link to any item directly. While the linking function is not completely incorporated at the present time it is being worked on. A good idea is to always keep notes concerning your searches, hits, and articles of interest when using this collection. See the Using the bookbag help guide for more information.

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Why are some of my personal name and place name searches returning weird results?

All named entities (personal, place, and orginization names, for example) were identified through an automated process. This process identified and marked over 1.4 million entities within the 1,384 issues of the Daily Dispatch. While research indicates that the process was accurate over 85% of the time on average, there is still a margin for error that must be endured by our users. Be aware that some searches will return odd results - a personal name search for "Price," for example, may return numerous advertisements. This is due to the automated nature of the identification process. Again, due to the large volume of text and quantity of entities within it, we cannot review and correct each item at the present time. For more information on the entity tagging process, see the white paper written by Alison Jones and Gregory Crane of Tufts University.

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Can I save my search results?

Search results can be marked and saved temporarily using the Bookbag feature noted above. Another useful feature of the collection is the search "History" listing. This is a session-based function that keeps track of the searches you perform. While it will list searches from your current session within the collection, the listing is cleared when you close your browser. It is always a good idea is to keep notes concerning your searches, hits, and articles of interest when using this collection.

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Will you be putting more of the Daily Dispatch online?

Due to the nature of the IMLS grant that funded the project and the cost of transcribing issues, there are no plans to put more of the Daily Dispatch online at this time. We are continuing our work with the Perseus Project and look forward to making the Boston Liberator and several supplementary items available online soon. If our plans change concerning the Daily Dispatch we will update this Frequently Asked Questions page.

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