Britishnewspaperarchive Anmeldelser 

56% of reviewers giving one star and an embarrassing overall score of 2.3. A total collapse since the new system was introduced and no one is listening.

I experienced a problem which was completely my own fault. Sophie sorted things out for me very quickly - she worked out what I had done wrong and corrected it.

It could be a bit easier....

oohhhhh just seen that i can no longer look at clippings without subscription! it all becoming cleaerer is it greed? a national asset turned into money making scheme... ill come back if you just go back to the old system listen to your users please!!!!!!

The British Newspaper Archive: Progress Marches Backwards

I have used the British Newspaper Archive for years and regarded it as one of the finest resources available to anyone interested in local history. It contained millions of pages of material and, more importantly, provided a reasonably straightforward means of finding them.

Someone has now apparently decided that this was a problem.

The recently redesigned website represents an impressive attempt to take a simple research tool and introduce as many additional stages, menus, filters and opportunities for bewilderment as modern technology permits. Searching, formerly a fairly painless business involving such obscure concepts as choosing a newspaper, entering a date and typing a word, has now acquired something of the atmosphere of applying for planning permission.

Particularly impressive is the treatment of saved research. Historians, notoriously unreasonable people, have a tiresome habit of wanting to know where they found things. Some subscribers accumulated thousands of carefully saved articles, bookmarks and notes. The new system appears determined to cure them of this dependency. Finding old material can now constitute a rewarding historical investigation in its own right.

Other useful features have either vanished or been rendered sufficiently difficult to find that one begins to appreciate the experiences of archaeologists searching for lost civilisations.

The search system deserves special praise. Where once it was possible to narrow results quickly, users now report wrestling with numerous filters, drop-down boxes and results which are less precise than before. It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate feature for a newspaper archive: by the time you locate the article you wanted, it has itself become considerably more historic.

The saddest aspect is that none of this was necessary. The old site was not glamorous, but it worked. Researchers generally prefer functioning databases to exciting interfaces. We are simple creatures. Give us a date box, a newspaper title and a search button and we can amuse ourselves for hours.

Judging by the quantity of similar complaints elsewhere, I am clearly not undergoing this character-building exercise alone. Long-standing subscribers are talking about cancelling, while people accustomed to computers are assuring the BNA that the difficulty is not an elderly inability to cope with change. This must be disappointing to anyone hoping to dismiss the complaints on the grounds that historians have only recently abandoned quill pens.

There are positives. The underlying newspaper collection remains magnificent, and reports suggest that the customer-service staff are helpful and courteous. Unfortunately, requiring excellent customer service because customers can no longer satisfactorily operate the website is rather like employing an exceptionally pleasant lifeboat crew after drilling holes in the ship.

The British Newspaper Archive has spent years preserving the past. Its latest achievement appears to be demonstrating that the previous version of its own website should also have been preserved.

Please bring it back.

If I could give this “0” I would, they’ve absolutely ruined a brilliant resource that I loved using daily, I have held a subscription for 5 years, I won’t be renewing, no chance. Searching on the site has become almost impossible.. it’s Laborious, clunky and train wreck compared to what it used to be. Advice to BNA, change it back.

Used to think this was a great site (I worked in IT for many years and found this site excellent - well presented). It is now a total shambles. Not sure if I will be subscribing again. Who did you get to do the upgrade - if it was external contractors I suggest it is time to go elsewhere. Time to wake up and listen to your customers. Put it back as it was or you will be losing a lot of subscribers - and money. Take notice ansd admit the upgrade was a costly mistake!!

Given the simplistic searching of the old system I cannot understand why they have now made it virtually impossible to use.

Simply pick region, dates, newspaper has been replaced with a system I cannot grasp or understand, & given the years of research I've carried out, i thought id quickly get to grips with it.
I do not understand why these organisations continually want to remake the wheel.

I cant & will not renew my decade long subscription.

I have no idea how a company could make such a mess of a perfectly functioning website. I agree with everyone else's scores here and would give it a zero if I could. Since the "upgrade" the site is unusable. Even if you can actually get into the home page, the UI is not user friendly and has obviously skipped any in depth beta testing before launching this upon an unsuspecting public. Poor form all around.

The changes that have been made to the BNA website are absymal! I have spent a lot of money subscribing to your services as they were the best. But these recent changes to the websites UI have made it impossible to navigate. I would warn the team responsible for this update that the people complaining aren't just people of an older generation who "dislike change" or "Struggle with newer tech". I am 32, I grew up with computers, websites and apps and I find this over simplification of a deisgn disastrous.

I've poured so much of my time and my money into researching my family history, I have so many articles saved. Articles that I could quickly look back at and remember basic information like the newspaper name and the date published. But somehow that's all gone now and all my bookmarked articles are reduced to a simple newspaper headline that might not even be relevant to why I saved that page. I need to have sources listed and organised otherwise EVERYONE'S research is useless. Given that BNA is based on archiving history, you should know how important those details are!!

Give us back the old website UI. This update is better suited for app users maybe. But for those of us who use it on desktop it's totally unfair. I specifically do not use Find My Past because they have exatly the same UI design and it's wholly unsuited for in depth research.

I used to love the BNA website, but the recent "improvements" are terrible. An enjoyable and rewarding research pass time has now, sadly, become a chore.
The new search options are far too complicated, and the results are not as accurate as the old website. I've tried using my keywords in each of the myriad of fields but none seem to work as before. I'm pretty savvy with computers but this interface is baffling.
And why so many time-consuming drop-down options?
The user interface is just not logical anymore.
The incredibly useful 'new and upcoming newspapers' link is gone too.
Unless the old (and very reliable) search parameters and simple menu options are replicated, I will, sadly, not be renewing my subscription.

Impossible to use the recently updated site now. Renewed my membership 4 weeks ago as BNA was a great resource over the last couple of years on my family ancestry search....... however I now can't use it. Unable to refine my searches......and end up getting thousand plus returns when I search for something! Extremely disappointed.......and regretting renewing my membership.

I used to love this site: by far the best for newspaper research. If only the company had bothered to do some research amongst its users before it launched this disaster.

I work with a lot of tech and I'm used to programs changing so I thought I'd give this a go. Often things do become intuitive once you've worked with them a little.

Alas that is not the case with this update. I created a new collection but cannot import any of my original bookmarks into it: they each have to be viewed and then saved into the new collection.

Well, you'd hope that would be the case, wouldn't you? I created a new collection, painstakingly clipped, annotated and saved three test clippings into it, only to find out that my collection had completely disappeared when I went back to try and find it via the menu.

The 'new' bookmarks are an unhelpful disaster as far as finding anything goes. The title of each clipping is gobbledegook. The date against it is the date you accessed it, not the date of the original article.

Fortunately I always make a document copy of my research, but I like to double check things and BNA have made this completely impossible.

I don't know who was responsible for coding this disaster, but for future reference, there is a thing called beta-testing you appear to have entirely ignored. If, as I sincerely hope, you restore the old functionality to the site, for God's sake beta-test it.

I have to agree with all of the negatives views regarding BNA. The site worked perfectly well without this upgrade which is appalling. I have been a member for many years but as my subscription renewal is due in October I may well look at the alternative site on Ancestry.com. I used to enjoy this site so much but can only say, "if this is progress, forget it”. Very disappointed.

The changes to the site have made it exceptionally difficult to use . As a result I haven’t renewed my subscription (after using for several years) and won’t until they go back to how it was or make big improvements.
The only positive is I did like the ability to look more easily through an entire edition and move easily to the next one . But that’s it - the rest of it is now a shambles. They have ruined what was a fantastic resource.

Through some administrative glitch, my annual renewal had not been processed two months ago. I found the telephone number to ring on the website Contact link. It was answered promptly by Joanna who acknowledged what had happened, advised me to pay for renewal there and then, and offered me some discount so that I wasn't being charged more than previously. Excellent service and very pleasant manner. Thank you!

Ruined a perfectly good site! The new layout is not user friendly at all and takes more time to find my saved bookmarks; which took me long enough to find as I thought they'd been wiped! You can't put them in alphabetical order so I have to scroll through loads of pages! Not Happy :(
Please change back

Many thanks to Sophie for prompt, courteous and helpful support in resolving payment issue.

The new site is a shambles and completely un-user friendly. Did the British Newspaper Archive actually consult anyone who uses the site before making the change? All I can see is a lot of fluff, extra clicks and complexity, where the old site - whilst not perfect - was clear and easy to navigate. My suspicion is that they based the design on integration with Find My Past, but failed to appreciate that many many many people who aren't genealogists - including me - use it for other forms of research.

They need to provide an option to revert to the old site or go back to it wholesale.

Questions for BNA. Before making fundamental changes, do you engage with subscribers to understand how they use the site? Have the changes been made due to overwhelming popular demand from users? Has the IT department made the changes simply because it can? Look at post-28th July reviews. What do you see? What used to be a pleasure is now a chore. What next? 'Stick' and lose subscribers, 'Twist' and lose face?