Searching by keyword
You’ll get the best results from searching the Archive if you use a bit of ingenuity. Try a variety of search terms, and even alternative spellings. Spellings, names, and conventions have probably changed many times since 1785, so try to use contemporary terms for the period you are searching. For example, Zimbabwe used to be Rhodesia, Bonaparte used to be spelled Buonaparte, etc.
The text that is searched has been extracted from a scanned image of the printed page by an automated process called Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Older pages rarely give a 100 per cent accurate reading. If you want to look at the raw OCR text, you can click on “read plain text” below the article viewer pane.
Bear in mind that The Times is a newspaper, not a history book, so its pages reflect the news and opinions of its time. This means that names we use today for historical events may not be recognised in a search. Classic examples of this are the World Wars: the First World War was the ‘Great War’ or just ‘the War’; the Second World War was ‘Hitler’s war’ or the ‘war in Europe’ - or again just ‘the war’. And it may seem obvious, but if you are looking for stories about Queen Victoria during her reign, she will simply be referred to as ‘the Queen’.
You don’t need to put quotes round the words you are searching for. The search automatically sorts results by relevance.
Searching for names
Remember that Times style is to refer to people initially by their full name, and subsequently by their surname. You’ll get better search results if you search by surname only, and then refine by place, date, context, etc.
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Searching by dates
The best way to look through a newspaper of a certain date is to put in a neutral, common word, such as “the”, and refine the dates to a two day range. When you get to the results page you can then click on any result for the day you want. When you get to the article page you can then scroll through the paper page by page using the page numbers above the article field.
If you get no results for the date you are searching, remember that The Times was (and is) not published on Sundays. In addition, publication of The Times was interrupted during the late 1970s because of industrial action. There were no papers at all between Nov 30, 1978 - Oct 22, 1979.
Narrowing your search
If you are looking without success for a specific event, you may find that you need to go to the edition of the newspaper for the following day and simply work your way through it, in case the spelling of relevant names or places has changed. For older events, bear in mind that the news may have had to travel a long way. The battles of the American Civil War, for example, are typically reported at least a month after the event.
Problems with search
The date refinement and refinements by subject area are not fully functioning at present. You can change the date range of your search - or refine it - if you do it in the article page, rather than the results page. You can also refine your search terms in the article page without losing the date range you have selected.
Sunday Times archive
The Sunday Times is not included under this archive. To find historical pages from The Sunday Times you will need to visit the Gale archive. Check with your public library if it offers this service.
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The Times after 1985
This archive covers only the 200 years between 1785 and 1985. For articles from The Times between 1985 and 2010 you will need to visit the Gale archive. Check with your public library if it offers this service. Later articles should be accessible via the site search at thetimes.co.uk.
For queries not covered here please email feedback@thetimes.co.uk