How to get Sourcer to work with newspapers.com?

Question

I can't seem to get Sourcer to work with Newspapers.com.  When I go to a file I have found there, it says. 

• WikiTree Sourcer doesn't know how to extract data from this page.
  
  It looks like a Newspapers.com page but not a clip page.

Do you also have this problem with Newspapers.com? 

Answer 1

When citing Newspapers.com it is best to create a clipping and cite that. That is what Sourcer supports.

This way anyone can view the image of the clipping.

If you are on the page for the article (example) and you want to cite the article "Series of Atrocious Murders at Sea" then click the button "Clip" at the top right of the web page. Then select the area of the page to cite, optionally enter a title and press the "Save Clipping" button.

Then... click the "View Clip" button that appears. Now you can use Sourcer to create a citation. Here is an example of a page like that.

If someone else shares a clip with you you can just go to the clip page and use Sourcer to create a citation.

Obituaries are a special case that confused me for a while. If you search obituaries on Newspapers.com or Ancestry you can end up on a page like this. Although this already has an area selected and a title it is still not a clip page. But there is a "Clip" button at the bottom right of the sidebar on the right. Click this and then "View Clip" as described above and you get to a page like this. This is a normal clip page that you can use Sourcer on.

Comments

I have now added this information to the WikiTree Sourcer User Guide here. Thanks for pointing out that it was not clear.

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Thank you for responding.

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Ahh...I always create a clip but did not understand that you have to be on "view clipping" page before clicking the "1" to proceed.  Thank you.

Here is a related question:  I created a title, "Obituary xxx"  for my clipping and then used sourcer to add it to the profile I was working on.  When I add it as an "inline citation" or "source" citation, sourcer gives it a different title--not the one I used, but rather the a generic title, "1927 Newspaper."  Is there a way to configure sourcer so that my own title will be added instead of the generic "1927 newspaper?"

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There is no option currently to use the title of the clip in the citation. What I do with the "label" part of the citation is use it to indicate how the cited clip relates to this specific profile. Here is my grandfather's profile for example.

It should be possible to enhance Sourcer to use the title but I would have to figure out the best place to put it in the citation.

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Is there a way to configure sourcer so that my own title will be added instead of the generic "1927 newspaper?"

If you scroll down the page below the article you'll see a link in light blue: Source Citation.  If you click that link it will give you a citation using the name of the clipping.  It won't use the WT template for newspapers.com though.  

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There is a difference between the "label" that Sourcer optionally creates and the "source title". MLA citations don't have an equivalent of the label. 

So for this obituary clip, the MLA citation provided by newspapers.com is:

"Obituary for Fred Smith SMITH" Newspapers.com, The Manhattan Mercury, April 14, 1938, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-manhattan-mercury-obituary-for-fred/138750225/

and the citation generated by Sourcer is

* '''1938 Newspaper''': "Newspapers.com"<br/>The Manhattan Mercury (Manhattan, Kansas) Thu, Apr 14, 1938, page 2<br/>{{Newspapers.com|138750225}} (accessed 15 January 2024)

So I could include the clip title in the source title like this:

* '''1938 Newspaper''': "Obituary for Fred Smith SMITH" Newspapers.com<br/>The Manhattan Mercury (Manhattan, Kansas) Thu, Apr 14, 1938, page 2<br/>{{Newspapers.com|138750225}} (accessed 15 January 2024)