This article draws on research conducted as part of a European project on the changing terminology used to conceptualise habitual drug, alcohol or tobacco use. We wanted to find out what language was utilised in Italy, Poland, Austria and the UK and how those concepts had changed since the mid-nineteenth century. We intended to make use of digitised journals for key word searches to enable comparisons to be made across countries and across time. Nothing, however, was straightforward. Few countries had digitised medical journals, so researchers had to use traditional search methods. Even in the UK, where journals were available digitally, there were problems with access and the searches that could be made. Digitisation did not provide a quicker way of researching cross nationally. Nonetheless our work did arrive at some valuable new conclusions. Our experiences also raise wider questions about using digitised journals for historical research.