British Newspaper Archive, and Outlook

For many years, up in North London at Colindale, there stood the 'British Newspaper Library.'  This contained, they said, copies of every paper published throughout these islands for several hundred years.  I only went there once, and having filled the form sat at a well lit desk, huge windows above, and awaited three, I think it was, large folders containing a years worth of copies of the newspaper I was researching.  Fabulous service.

Then one day it all vanished.

The online service came into being and here indeed was a very good, and expensive, service that could be reached by the viewer at home.  One problem was that not all the papers had been uploaded online, new papers come on monthly I believe, but for myself it was good and easy to use service that brought many results.

Now of course the archive has been updated!

What was a simple and easy to use service is now a disaster.

Designed for those under 25 who live off their phones it is hard to comprehend, slow to work, difficult to organise, and totally inefficient.  I have just spent an hour struggling to find, read, download, and enjoy a quick search.  It was not worth it.  Once I had found the paper, once I searched through, I found the screen was enlarged too much, or adjusting it this became too small, for copying purposes.  It was not possible to man manage this.  

Once, I enjoyed this archive, now I just fume my way through it.  I dread doing a proper search again.

I read they have listened to complaints and made adjustments.  They ought to have listeened before they mucked up a proper site and replaced it with this.  Their adjustments cannot be seen by me.  If indeed there were any.

 

 

Talking of slow, heavy, awkward, apps and things designed to make life easier there is always Microsoft Outlook.  Using Firefox I found it was blocked, as Firefox for a while blocked everything to protect us.  Now it has ended this and I can use Outlook on Firefox once again.  However, on OPERA, it is slow, cumbersome and leads to despair while attempting to read an incoming email.  It's a good job I get so few.  Opera itself appears to be a useful browser, but is so slow.  The laptop is old, but the power is good, Google of course manages well.  Everything I post is sent to a data bank controlled by the FBI in the US, so if ever I disappear you know where I am.  It is because Google, Microsoft and others offer so much detail to the US government that China and others have ceased to use them.  China long ago created it's own system, and many are dumping Outlook and Gmail for those systems that hide you opinions.

A bit late for mine!