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Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a process by which software reads a page image and translates it into a text file by recognizing the shapes of the letters.  OCR enables searching of large quantities of full-text data, but it is never 100% accurate. The level of accuracy depends on the print quality of the original newspaper issue, its condition at the time of microfilming, the level of detail captured by the microfilm scanner, and the quality of the OCR software. Issues with poor quality paper, small print, mixed fonts, multiple column layouts, or damaged pages may contribute to poor OCR accuracy.  The effectiveness of OCR software has improved dramatically over the years, however, there are many pages within the CHNC that were added more than 10 years ago, and the quality of the OCR created text for those pages can only be corrected manually.

Searching within historic newspapers can be challenging.  The way people wrote and spoke in earlier times was very different from how we express ourselves now.  Use this forum to share your questions and ideas, and see what others have to share from their own experiences finding relevant information from the Colorado newspapers within the CHNC database.