NewsBank
Originally begun as an article archiving and indexing service that provided full text of newspaper articles on microfiche, NewsBank has grown into a Web-accessible full text article service that covers newspapers and wire services worldwide.
The service offers multiple accesses for users. The ones available at UNF Library are
| Business NewsBank, and |
| NewsBank NewsFile. |
These services cover newspapers, news agency transmissions, wire services, magazines, and government documents.
Subscribers can also choose individual newspapers, as is the case with the UNF Library, which subscribes separately to a number of major Florida papers in addition to the overall news services covered in the three services listed above.
Searching NewsBank
To begin a search in NewsBank, choose one of the NewsBank services listed in the UNF Library's databases list. You will be taken to the opening selection menu from which you can choose a specific collection or an individual newspaper.
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| NewsBank Selection Menu |
Selecting one of the options from the menu will bring you into a simple keyword screen where you can enter topics. This isn't necessarily the most efficient way to search the system, but it is a quick starting place that will let you identify possible relevant information fairly quickly.
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| Keyword Entry Screen |
The default keyword screen provides an input box where you can add a single word or multiple words. This screen also supports the use of Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT and the use of proximity operators such as ADJ. If you do not connect words in the input box using operators, the system will default to AND and list first the articles that have both your terms.
A more efficient search will result from phrase searching. The following example shows how to search for the phrases "school vouchers" and "school voucher" in one search.
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| Keyword Search Using Proximity and Truncation |
Notice that in the sample the two words have been connected using the ADJ (adjacency) operator and that the word voucher, which can be singular or plural, has been ended with an asterisk. The asterisk is used as a wild card or truncation symbol and will help the system pick up both singular and plural forms of the words.
Clicking the red "Search" button will send the search request to the NewsBank system and return a results listing. Items are organized by relevancy. The system looks at your search terms and then compares their frequency and location in the results retrieved and then places the most relevant items at the top of the list. The number to the left of each item indicates the relevance of the item, the higher the number the higher the relevance.
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| Results Listing |
Each item in the results listing provides the date of the article, the publication or wire service where the article originated (in bold print) including the place of origin, and the linked article headline or title. Clicking the title link will take you into a display of the full text of the article itself.
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| First Screen of a Full Article |
The sample above shows the beginning of the full text of an article on school vouchers that originally appeared in the newspaper Times-Picayune on March 23, 2003. Included in the article information is the page number for the original print publication, section of the paper in which the article appeared, and the article author (if available). NewsBank also provides you with a list of "Topics" that are covered in the article and an estimate on how many pages it will take to print the article. The topics listing can often help you choose other terms for finding related information.
The article text follows the basic bibliographic information and Topics listing, as illustrated below.
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| Continuation of Article Text |
You have three options for saving the articles from a NewsBank search: saving the information to disk, printing the article, or emailing the article.
To print or save an article, choose the "Printer friendly" option from the tool bar just above the article and newspaper titles. This launches a separate browser window that has a clean copy of the article without all the buttons and navigation bars that appear in the normal NewsBank display. To save the article to disk, choose the browser window's File, Save As option and a disk location to store the file. To print, choose the browser window's Print option and send the article to an attached or network printer.
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| Sample Print Window |
Emailing the article is as easy as choosing the "E-Mail" option from the tool bar immediately above the article and newspaper titles. A new display opens that allows you to input your email address.
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| Email Window |
You can also select the file format that you want to send. HTML is standard Internet format which any graphics based Email system will handle fine. If you plan to copy and paste information into a word processor and don't really care about HTML formatting, choose ASCII Text format. This creates an email copy of the article with no special formatting that is easily incorporated into any word processor.
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| Moving Around in the NewsBank System |
Look below the NewsBank title for means of navigating the system. The long horizontal bar provides you with means for doing a new search and getting help. Below this top toolbar is your search results window, which will display your list of results or a full article that you have selected for viewing. Below the search window are options for E-mailing, printing, listing results, and moving to the next item in the list. The options will change to based on your current position in the system to give you ways to return to the results list, to move to the next page of a listing, or to move to the next full text article in the results.
To do a new search, click the "New Search" option on the top toolbar. To edit your current search, simply change your terms in the search window that appears above your results listing. Note that NewsBank displays your current search strategy in the keyword screen, but you will also have the option of choosing the "more search options" link as a means of narrowing or further refining your search.
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| More Search Options Screen |
The "more search options" screen accommodates the same search techniques as the keyword except that it expands the possibilities. Notice in the screen above that by choosing the down arrow to the right of the keyword input box, you can choose to search your keywords in "All Text," in "Lead/First Paragraph," or in "Headline/Title." If your keywords are retrieving very large numbers of documents, limiting the search to the lead paragraphs or to the article titles should limit retrieval considerably.
You can also choose to combine up to two keywords or phrases by using the fill-in-the-blank boxes and then selecting the appropriate Boolean operator to the left of the boxes. This can also help in limiting searches that retrieve very large numbers of items.
Further means for limiting a search are available in the bottom two input boxes in the "more options" screen. To the right of the topmost of the two boxes is a clickable link to "Topics." Topics are assigned for each article, as we saw in our results from the keyword search. You can browse a list of topics included in the NewsBank system by clicking the link and entering a term to start looking for. Think of "topics" as you would "subject headings" or "descriptors" in other databases.
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| Topic Browse Window |
The window above shows how the topic browse works. After entering a word in the Find Terms dialog box, NewsBank will display available topics in the menu box just below. You can choose to add the term by choosing that option from the toolbar below the menu box or you can choose to expand the term to provide other topic suggestions. Adding the term will place the selection into the customized search window.
Another way of limiting a search is to browse the source publications. For example, to limit the search for information on school vouchers to articles appearing in Newsday, you would click the "Source" link next to the bottom of the two browse dialog boxes. Inputting a publication title or a part of a title will take you into an alphabetical listing of titles to choose from.
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| Source Browse Window |
The source browse window works the same as the topic browse window. Highlight the line that you want to include in your search and click the "Add Term To Search" option below the menu listing.
The following example demonstrates using the customized search to choose keywords and limit the results to a specific publication, in this case, to the Florida Times-Union.
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| Customized and Limited Search |
The result of this search is a much smaller selection of articles than the previous search of the entire NewsBank collection. Notice that only ten articles on school vouchers appeared in the Times-Union. If your goal is to focus and limit retrieval, the customized search provides the best option for doing so.
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| Customized Search Results |
Retrieving articles is the same as in the keyword search: click a title link to get the full article and then decide if you want to save it, print it, or email it.
When to Use Materials from NewsBank
NewsBank is an excellent current events and historical events source. Its large collection of publications from all over the country ensures that a researcher will get a variety of perspectives on any topic. Keep in mind that the vast majority of the materials covered are news publications and not academic or research journals, so, as a source of materials for a research paper in a college course, NewsBank will not be your best source of information. As a source for gaining a good overall understanding of a topic as a precursor to locating and reading professional literature, NewsBank is excellent.
As with any materials that you locate on a particular topic, carefully examine the source of the information, the qualifications of the author, and the recency of the information before accepting its validity in your particular project. In some cases older articles will provide you with perspectives current to the time when an event was developing. Contrast the historical perspective with later articles that add hindsight to the mix.
Even though it might not be your best source for academic research papers, NewsBank is an extremely valuable information tool that will answer many questions.
Page updated 04/05.
