Researching Topics in Newspaper Databases

RESEARCHING TRENDS IN NEWSPAPER DATABASES

A Guide

By Emily Z. Brown

WHAT IS A NEWSPAPER, EXACTLY?

A newspaper is a periodical that is published daily and sometimes weekly.

Newspapers cover current events, social commentary, reviews, advertisements, and public notifications.

Most newspapers also have a corresponding online presence. BCC Students have access to the historical archives of several prominent newspapers.

FINDING NEWSPAPER DATABASES

Under the Library Services section on the Library Home page choose “Find Articles.”

Choosing “Locate Journals & Newspapers” would lead you to a search of newspapers by title. So, for instance, if you wanted to know if BCC had access to the Fall River Herald.

For this exercise, we will go in through Find Articles.


On the next screen you will see a listing of BCC Databases by subject.

Choose Newspaper Databases to find a listing of all the newspaper databases you have access to through BCC.


As a BCC student you have access too 4 newspaper databases. These four databases index different newspapers.

In this tutorial we will examine three databases:• Newspaper Source• Proquest Newspapers

(includes both the Historical Boston Globe and New York Times)

• Lexis Nexis News

NEWSPAPER SOURCEHow to search Newspaper Source

SEARCHING NEWSPAPER SOURCE

Choose the database Newspaper Source.

This will open the database and allow you to search several newspapers. Among them:

• The Christian Science Monitor• USA Today• The Washington Post• The Wall Street Journal• Among many others….


The Newspaper Source databases is an EBSCO Database. As such, we will not be talking about the fine points of searching (for a refresher, please refer back to my tutorial on Searching EBSCO Databases).

I have entered my search terms in the basic search box.


My initial search was unsuccessful. Two of the three articles are not owned full text by BCC.

I can still access these articles by clicking on the link “Request this item through interlibrary loan.”


After changing my search terms to twitter and protests, I have a lot more options.

I also used the date range tool to narrow my results to articles written in 2014.

These three results discuss the protests happening in Ferguson, Missouri.

FINDING AN ARTICLE IN NEWSPAPER SOURCE

Once I have identified an article I would like to use as a source, I click on the title and find the full text beneath the article record.

As in other EBSCO databases there are tools to email and cite this source.

PROQUEST NEWSPAPERSHow to search Proquest Newspapers

SEARCHING PROQUEST NEWSPAPERS

Choose the database Proquest Newspapers

This will open the database and allow you to search several newspapers. Among them:

• Historical Boston Globe• Historical New York Times• Boston Globe• Among many others….


Enter your search terms into the search box.

I chose to enter the terms

Twitter protest

to begin my search.


I like to make sure that my search is sorted by relevance.

Immediately I see results relevant to my search.

The yellow newspaper icon indicates that the article is in a historical newspaper, but it was published in 2009.


If the article is in a historical newspaper, as indicated by the yellow newspaper icon, you will see the article as a PDF scan of the actual newspaper.

Search terms are highlighted so you can easily find them.


An article in a newspaper that is not historical will be available in HTML once you click on the title.

I’ve highlighted the email and citation options in this database and indicated where the text of the article begins.

LEXIS NEXIS NEWSHow to search Lexis Nexis News

SEARCHING LEXIS NEXIS NEWS

Choose the database Lexis Nexis News

This will open the database and allow you to search hundreds of regional, national, and world newspaper.


When you open the database the default search is the basic search. I entered the search terms

twitter protest

Also of note, there are links to hot topics that are in newspaper headlines this week.


The advanced search in Lexis Nexis News is very useful. You can narrow by source type (newspaper, magazine, university news, etc), region, or location.

This is a powerful way to search if you’re looking for a trend in a specific geographical area.


On the left side of the screen you will be able to narrow to different types of sources (newspapers, news transcripts, magazines, etc).

On the right you’ll see your article results. I’ve called out several that make sense to my research.


When you click on the title of the article you will see the full text in HTML.

One the upper right hand side of the screen you will see email and citation functions within Lexis Nexis.

Thus concludes our exploration of Newspaper Databases.

Researching Topics in Newspaper Databases

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