Challenge #5 - Newspapers Online - part one - Due May 8

One of the things that aren't always available free through Google are stories from newspapers that are more than a few days or weeks old. OCL and the State Library pay for access for our customers to hundreds of newspapers. This month's challenge gets you started in the specialized searching of newspaper databases.

Start by watching the America’s Newspapers tutorial which is a Powerpoint slideshow.
You can simply go to the Internet address and watch but if you want to control the speed of the show or reverse or even go fast forward, the instructions below will help. Be patient while it loads.

http://images.newsbank.com/infoweb/agg/help/tutorialPubLib.pps

When prompted, click OK or Open.
Right click your mouse and click on Full Screen
Right click again to see other controls so you can work your way through the tutorial at your own speed.

The pause feature is useful since this slideshow goes a little fast. Right hand click again to end the show. If you can’t watch it in one sitting, note the slide number and you can start again from where you stopped.

When searching America’s Newspapers, try to think like a newspaper copyeditor or writer when you create your search strategy. The most important part of a good newspaper article has the the basic who, what, where and why of a story. This is the lead paragraph. The headline can be cute or provocative but won't be very useful in describing the content of the article. Searching full text can give you too many unrelated results. So selecting the Lead Paragraph option can often give you better results than either a broad keyword search or a headline search.

Some hints for this database:

Search for obits in both America’s Newspapers and American Obituaries. Some newspapers didn’t always split their data feeds properly and the obituary you want could be in either database.

Be skeptical when you don’t find something. Always try a few search methods.

When searching local stories from before the Asbury Park Press began to be indexed (1999), remember big stories could have also been covered in the NY Times or the Philadelphia papers. Find even a small mention of your story and it will give a starting point for a search in the APP microfilm. The Press of Atlantic City is indexed back to the late 80’s and often covered big Ocean County stories so don’t automatically eliminate that paper from your local story searches.

The obituaries in America’s Newspapers from the Asbury Park Press really start in February 2005 not January 1999 as listed in the database. From January 1999 to January 2005 less than 5% of the obits in the paper were added to the America’s Newspapers electronic file. It is very long story involving the wrong electronic feeds. So if you can’t find an obit in the APP from 1999 to January 2005, please send the request to Toms River so the microfilm can be checked.

Since the Toms River Observer went weekly many articles that appear in the paper don’t seem to be showing up in the database. It is another problem between the newspaper company and the database company.


1. Search an Ocean County town name. Either Toms River or Tuckerton works well in this example. Type it in the search box and click search. Take a look at the number of results, what papers they’re from and from what years. Now click on edit the search and change the dropdown menu to Lead Paragraph. Take a look at the results. Now try the search with Headline as the choice of type of search.

2. Search someone with local fame like James Mancini (remember to put the name in quotes so you don’t get false hits like an article about Edward Mancini and James Jones) in the entire country. Play with the limits on the left by Year, Location and Source and the different search options. Add the word Ocean to your search. What changed? Trying searching Elaine McConnell nationwide, then adding library or librarian or Ocean.

3. Play around with the features and do a few practice searches of your choice. I found the first mention of Sarah Palin in an Alaskan newspaper in 1991 when she came in 2nd in a 10K race. Try to think of real life questions where American’s Newspapers could give the answer.
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America’s Newspapers is not the only source of back issue stories from Newspapers. In the last challenge, you might have played with Google News Archive.

OCL also subscribes to Custom Newspapers which covers many newspapers that America’s Newspapers doesn't have especially international titles. There are also newspapers in some of the Ebsco databases.

How do you find what database has what newspaper or even what magazine or periodical?

OCL subscribes to a service called Ebsco A-Z that lets you know what database has what newspaper or magazine and even what subscriptions we get in paper and our microfilm holdings.

Where is Ebsco A-Z? Well, it isn't listed under that name since it was decided the customers won’t know what it meant. Just look for search box on the main Find-it page under "Are you looking for...."

Now if you search for the Star Ledger using this search box, you’ll see something like this:

Notice the Star Ledger is listed as being owned in paper and the customers are directed to our catalog with a link. The names of the two databases we own that include the Star Ledger are also linked.

4. Search for the Washington Post in Ebsco A-Z. Figure out which database will have coverage for January 1981. Click on it.

5. Find an article about the Reagan Inauguration in January 1981 and email it to the Challenge address. (Don’t forget the lead paragraph trick!)

6. Blog about searching for newspaper articles. A real life story of something you found interesting or found for a customer would be great.