Finding newspaper articles using LexisLibrary and Factiva

Transcription

1 Finding newspaper articles using LexisLibrary and Factiva LexisLibrary is a resource for finding legal information, but also has within it a database of British newspapers. It includes national and regional newspapers, broadsheets and tabloids. Factiva provides news from over 10,000 sources, including the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Dow Jones and Reuters newswires and the Associated Press. Produced as a source of business information, it also contains articles from international (and British) newspapers, including national and regional titles, broadsheets and tabloids. Both databases are ideal for finding full text newspaper articles right up to today s date, with archives going back to the 1980s in some cases, though this varies from one title to another. Please note, in both databases the articles are the full and exact wording as published in the print editions of the newspapers, but they are not in the format of the original newspaper layout. Both databases are available on and off campus and are accessible from Databases A-Z in the Electronic Library at For access to Factiva when off campus, it is essential to start from off-campus applications before proceeding to the Electronic Library: 1. LexisLibrary Searching Select News from the Search tab at the top of the screen. From the Sources drop down menu, you have options to search: through all the UK newspapers which are included in the database; by group, e.g. national, regional or broadsheets; by selecting individual newspapers from the alphabetical title list. LIBRARY SERVICES

2 Clicking on the i (in the blue circle) for information once you have selected a particular title will tell you how far back the archive goes for that newspaper. You can specify a particular date, range of dates, or all dates, from the drop down menu. Search Tips As you enter your search terms, you can choose where they will be looked for, e.g. Anywhere (to keep options open and retrieve a high number of results), In the Headline (to find coverage as a main news story), 3 or more mentions (to reduce the number of results, but make them more relevant): select from the Search drop down menus. Boolean and other search Operators LexisLibrary uses the common database Boolean search operators AND, OR, between search terms to allow you to search more effectively, narrowing or broadening your searches. Click on one of these from the drop down menu when entering your search. AND Narrows a search to only find records which contain all search terms: e.g. Liverpool And football only finds articles which contain both of these words 2

3 OR Widens a search to find records containing any of your alternative search terms, but not necessarily all: e.g. Liverpool Or Everton finds articles which contain either of these words Other options in the Search drop down menus allow you to select the proximity of your search terms to each other, which will make your results more relevant, e.g. Same Sentence, Same Paragraph and Within 5 Words, or to exclude a term from your search by using And Not. Phrases Entering more than one word in one search box will find results containing both or all words, as an exact phrase or with the words in very close proximity to each other. Truncation Wildcards An excalamtion mark (!) is a truncation symbol that can be used after the first few characters of a word to include all varying endings of that word in a search. e.g. journalis! will find journalism, journalist and journalists The asterisk * can be used anywhere in a word except the first letter, as a substitute for one or more characters to account for differences in spelling or other variations of the form of a word. e.g. organi?ation will find organization (American spelling) and organisation (English spelling); wom*n will find woman and women Alternative Search Terms If you are struggling to find information on a given topic try changing your search terms to include alternative keywords e.g. a mobile device could also be referred to as smartphone or tablet. Displaying Results Once you have run your search, you can select the order in which the results are listed; choose the option to Sort by: Relevance: Publication Date: based on how frequently your search terms appear within the articles starting with the most recently published 3

4 All results are full text. They show the headlines of the articles and details of which edition of a newspaper they are from, which section they appeared in, page number, word count and the byline (author). To see the whole article, simply click on the headline. /Print/Save As you work through your results, you may wish to print, save or individual records. You can do this as you go along, from the options visible when you ve reached the full text of the article or by clicking to tick and select in your results list if you d prefer to deal with them all together later. Then click on Add to (folder). 4

5 When you click on Add to, the record is added to the My Documents folder at the top of the screen. Documents will be deleted from this folder at the end of your search session. Click on the folder link to open it. Click to tick the box next to an article, and then on the print, download or icon as desired. Further Help For further information, use the Help option at any point, or consult your Academic Liaison Librarian. 2. Factiva Searching Enter your search terms in the Free Text Search box, Search Form. You can specify a particular date, range of dates, or all dates available in the archive, from the Date drop down menu. To search in a specific newspaper: Select Source > All Sources Type the title and click on the arrow in a blue circle Scroll through the alphabetical list of matching titles to the one you want. N.B. Choose the title with the newspaper symbol; the blue sphere represents the web site. Click on the i (in a circle) for information, to see how far back the archive goes for that newspaper. To see which newspapers are included in the database for a particular country: Select Source > All Sources Select Source Category > drop down menu > By Region Either type the country in the Source search box, or scroll through the alphabetical list of countries 5

6 Search Tips Boolean Operators Like LexisLibrary, Factiva uses the common database Boolean search operators AND, OR, between search terms: simply type them between your search terms in the Free Text Search box. It additionally uses the other Boolean operator: NOT Excludes part of a topic or specific terms from a search: e.g. olympic games not winter finds articles containing the phrase olympic games, but excludes any which also contain the word winter. Phrases Two or more words together in the search box will automatically be treated as an exact phrase, e.g. in the example in the screen shot above, articles found will contain both the phrases world trade center and terrorist attacks. (See also use of the truncation symbol below). Truncation Use an asterisk * as a truncation symbol to find the root of a word plus all the variations made by adding letters to the end of it. e.g. politic* will find politics, political, politically. In the screen shot example above, cent* finds more results than center or centre. Wildcards The question mark (?) is a wildcard symbol which can be used within a word as a substitute for a single letter, to find variations of the word. There must be at least three letters before the question mark. e.g. globali?ation will find globalisation and globalization. 6

7 Displaying Results Once you have run your search, you can select the order in which the results are listed; choose the option to Sort by: Relevance: Most recent first Oldest first based on how frequently your search terms appear within the articles All results are full text. They show the headlines of the articles, details of which newspaper or other news source they are from, and give a word count. To see the whole article, simply click on the headline. /Print/Save As you work through your results, you may wish to print, save or individual records. You can do this as you go along,, via the options available as you read the full text of an article or by clicking to tick the boxes in your results list if you d prefer to deal with them all together later; the same options are also available on th is screen. You have the options to: View selected articles selected headlines with links to full-text Format headlines or articles for printing Format headlines or articles for saving as an HTML file. Your selections will open in a new window. Use your browser's menu or commands to save the file: if these are not visible, use the Rich Text Format option (see below), or copy and paste your results into a Word document. 7

8 Save or View selected headlines or articles in Rich Text Format. When viewing in RTF, you can change the font size, and add other notations as desired before saving or printing the document. Save or View selected headlines or articles as a PDF document. Please note that you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader v.6 or higher to view PDF files properly. Further Help For further search tips, use the Examples link on the search screen. For other help at any point, use the Live Help link from the top of the search screen, the options available from the Contact Us link at the top of the Examples screen, or consult your Academic Liaison Librarian. Guide Updated: By: Sheena Streather 8