Can You Search Newspapers?
May 12, 2009 – 9:35 am | by Daryl Tay
Newspaper Fail
One year later from a somewhat controversial post explaining why Generation Y doesn’t read newspapers and if the newspapers can do anything about it, I’ve come to realise more and more how ineffective newspapers are, compared to online news sources and blogs.
Firstly, let’s state the obvious that physical newspapers cannot be searched easily, as compared to bookmarking and saving a link online.
Next, even if there were links online to the news articles, it usually ends up in one of two ways:
1) The link expires when it is transferred to their archive section or some similar movement (Ever bookmarked a page to find it’s not there anymore? That’s what happens)
2) They try to make you register with them after the “free access” period has expired. Whether or not they try to charge is another issue, but registering for news which is essentially free, is ridiculous.
With such a poor value proposition (information can’t be found, or is hard to access), is it any wonder we’re turning more and more away from newspapers? Yes, there are some mainstream media news sources that are doing a good job online as well. That’s fine and good, but the industry as a whole doesn’t seem to be getting it’s act together.
Add in the Associated Press threat of legal action against bloggers who wrote about news and linked to them (which incidentally, actually helps the papers), and you just wonder if newspapers and mainstream media are enjoying themselves walking backwards instead of progressing
Tags: ap, archive, associated press, bookmarking, controversial, free access, generation y, ineffective, mainstream media, newspapers, poor value proposition, register on newspaper sites, search newspapers
5 Responses to “Can You Search Newspapers?”
By QQ*librarian on May 12, 2009 | Reply
Hi
I understand your frustrations. As a librarian assisting users in information search frequently, I share the same frustrations regarding newspaper archives as you indicated.
Not sure if you are already aware, the National Library has digital archives of the Straits Times as well as databases of past newspaper articles available free.
For Digitised Straits Times from 1845 – 1982, access here: http://newspapers.nl.sg/.
For access to full-text past newspapers (of selected periods depending on the database vendor), go to http://www.nl.sg > eResources> by type > enewspapers.
Hope this helps you in your news research sometimes.
By Cneil on May 15, 2009 | Reply
Actually, newspapers are very well indexed and searchable. However, the only way to do it is to use resources available through university of law libraries (Lexis-Nexis, the New York Times index, etc.)
From a standpoint of becoming popular and spreading virally, those tools won’t help; but to anyone interested in scholarly research or book writing, they are much better.
The web is frustrating because things are getting edited all of the time and revised. An article might be around, but the URL might have been changed. Books in the library and indexed microfiche are permanent.
By Daryl Tay on May 15, 2009 | Reply
@Cneil: Yes there are the databases (which aren’t free) and that’s the problem isn’t it? I mean the vast majority of us aren’t academic researchers or authors, and just want to find that article of interest we vaguely remember from a month back, but can’t.