Historical February–March 2012 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The “rehabbing” of the past issues of The Times of Skinker DeBaliviere (and The Paper) is now finished.
We began this project in the summer of 2011 because we found that our earlier work to put the issues online had not resulted in their being adequately searchable.
The process originally used to recognize the text of the photo/scanned issues produced a high proportion of gobbledegook (a technical term).
We decided to go back to the beginning, clean up the photoscans further to increase their readability, perform the OCR (optical character recognition) on each one again, edit the results, and finally, reload them to the website.
We have been doing this by decades so the improvement should have been available for our early years for some months. Perhaps you haven’t used the Times Archives until now, but we urge you to go to the site and have a look. Search for your name or someone else’s or for some event like Blitz or Centennial or Art Fair. You’ll be surprised what you’ll be able to find. Bear in mind that OCR is still not perfect.
If your search fails on something you’re sure was there, try other words that would have occurred.
The publication was also not always perfect.
If the name or subject you’re looking for was misspelled in the newspaper, it will not find it. Try common misspellings or alternative spellings just in case. Searching for “Skinker DeBaliviere” will result in far too many hits. Focus on the key and distinctive words that relate to the topic, like “Team Policing” or “historic district” or “tax credits.” Capitalization is not significant.
On the home page there are buttons that will allow you to contact us.
If you are having trouble with anything in the Archives, please use the Email Marj Weir button.
I watch my email closely, so I should be able to get you an answer quickly. Here’s the web address. http://sdtimes.org/ index.html.
Please try it out and let us know what you think. Searches for an individual are often touching, as well as fun. Just typing in “Sam Green” takes you to dozens of past neighborhood events and reminds you of all the rewarding and enjoyable activities in our neighborhood.
Original photograph caption
Original Times archive-search screenshot. Descriptive caption supplied.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February–March 2012.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2012_02.pdf, printed page(s) 3; PDF page(s) 3.
