[Eril-l] Comparative reviews of current newspaper databases

[Sandra Wong]

Hi Melissa, 

Summon does index newspapers rather well (PQ has more or less cornered the market on newspaper databases!). 

Initially, when we picked up Summon back in 2010, in it's initial interface, newspaper results overwhelmed search results - librarians were really not happy with that. So we used their API to parse out the newspaper results under our banner of "Library Search" which is on top of the Summon discovery service . Library Search searches a whole bunch of different silos (ejournal titles, database titles), library website, course reserves, IR, in addition to Summon results using the Summon APIs. 

You should be able to see it on our home page under Library Search. Newspaper results appear on the bottom left hand corner. You shouldn't need to login to do a search. http://www.lib.sfu.ca/ 

To go to Summon directly, change the default search to Fast Search - that's what we're calling our Summon service. 

In addition, since the change to the Summon 2.0 interface, newspaper results are now a link at the place where the first newspaper result would have appeared in the results list. So instead of a citation to a newspaper article, you get a link... "News results for....your search terms". 

Hope that helps. Sorry Helen, I have no recommendations for comparisons of newspaper databases - we have Canadian Newsstand and PressDisplay (both Proquest) and Factiva and Lexis Nexis both. I'm pretty certain that usage of Lexis has been declining over the last several years though. 

Sandra. 
----- Original Message -----

From: "Melissa Belvadi" <mbelvadi at upei.ca> 
To: "Helen Aiello" <haiello at wesleyan.edu> 
Cc: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org 
Sent: Wednesday, 16 December, 2015 13:31:49 
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] Comparative reviews of current newspaper databases 

Do you have a discovery service? I have heard, but not been able to verify for myself, that Proquest's Summon system is very good at searching newspapers, and you could probably configure a profile or custom link or such that limited the search to newspapers. I'd actually like to hear from Summon customers whether this is in fact true. 

Melissa Belvadi 

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 4:45 PM, Aiello, Helen < haiello at wesleyan.edu > wrote: 





Can anyone lead me to a recent article that may have done a comparative review(s) of current newspaper access databases? 



I am not looking for individual newspaper titles (such as Gale or ProQuest newspapers) nor historical newspaper database (such as Readex products) but db such as 

Newsbanks Access world news or ProQuest’s International newspapers or BBC Monitoring. 



Access to current newspapers through factiva or Lexis Nexis seems to confound undergraduate users so we are considering, and investigating, whether offering a newspaper centric only resource might be a better path of access. 



Thanks for your help on this…. 


Helen 



******************************************** 
Helen M. Aiello, Acquisitions and E-Resources Librarian 
Wesleyan University Library 
Middletown, CT 06459-9299 
Voice: (860) 685-3828 







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Melissa Belvadi 
Collections Librarian 
University of Prince Edward Island 
mbelvadi at upei.ca 902-566-0581 



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_________________________________________________________________________________ 
Sandra Wong, Electronic Resources Librarian 
Collections Management Office 
Simon Fraser University Library 
8888 University Drive 
Burnaby, BC Canada V5A 1S6 

Email: swongj at sfu.ca or lib-licensing at sfu.ca 
Phone: 778.782.4930 
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