Globe no longer in Lexis-Nexis

The Boston Globe had dropped out of LexisNexis. It no longer appears in the source list (under Boston or The--a common glitch).

Steve has suggested Factiva as an alternate source, and indeed it is there:

Most Recent Issue: 26 January 2010 First Issue: 1 January 1987 Weekend Update Schedule: The weekend editions are loaded on Factiva during a 1-3 day period after date of publication. Coverage History: Selected coverage from 1 January 1987 to 29 August 2001

Boston.com has recent material at no cost, and can serve as a handy index of "pay-per-view" articles which might be otherwise retrieved for free in Factiva.


The Boston Herald is in LexisNexis.

Future News?

I came across an announcement today for a project out of Google Labs, called Living Stories. It'a an "experiment" between Google, the NYT and the Washington Post to re-present news content for a 21st century audience and in a 21st century medium.

The FAQs (also linked from the bottom of the screen) offer interesting additional information. Clicking on a link from the Living Stories page, though, reveals where the product is going in terms of personalization and other features. Very cool.

And in certain ways, we're back to the future. Google has incorporated into real-time reporting some of the features that Facts.com already offers for historical news (i.e., Recently Deceased or No-Longer-Living Stories).

Berkman Media Re: Public Site

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society today announced "a major research release": Media Re:public: News and Information as Digital Media Come of Age. This series of papers explores the potential and the challenges of the emerging networked digital media environment -- an environment that impacts what we do at the desk, in classes, and in our work with users. It's worth a look!

"The Media Re:public series was put together over the course of a year of examining the news media in the U.S., engaging with journalists, bloggers, citizen journalists, public broadcasters, publishers, advertising networks, researchers, technologists, and many others. It builds on previous discussions, such as the 2005 Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference, and highlights the need for a new public conversation about reinventing journalism in the public interest."

From the project main page, the conversation is being continued via the project blog.

Blocked Content in Factiva

This week, we discovered that certain news titles in Factiva are unavailable to us due to the terms of our subscription. From the "source info" page, it's impossible to tell that access is blocked, so you might start searching -- as JC and I did earlier this week -- and come up empty. This handy list will help you identify those titles. Many we have alternate access to; others will need to be retrieved via ILL. The list, of course, is static and our world is dynamic, so its accuracy may weaken over time.

Searching for newspapers by country in LexisNexis

Posted to the LN-Academic listserv in October, after the new interface was launched.  Beware, however, that results seem to vary depending on the search route you take; "barack obama" in newspapers of "africa" from the "previous 2 years" demonstrates this inconsistency. 

A. You can use the Sources tab to impose geographic restrictions.

1. Click on Sources to open the Browse Sources form
2. At the top of the form, make sure that Publication Type is selected
3. Use the Filter By dropdown to pick Europe (or a specific country)
4. Click on the News folders in the bottom portion of the screen
5. You will now see that a new drop down box appears at the top, allowing you to choose "Multiple/Single Sources." If you choose "Multiple" it will give you a nice selection of the big group files for Europe such as "Toute la Presse - Français"
6. Choose the source(s) you want and click OK - Continue to run your search

B. You can search international news sources on the News tab.

1. Click on the News tab
2. Select a broad source such as "All News, English" or "Major World Newspapers"
3. Run your search
4. In the results set, switch the clustering from Publication Type to Geography

C. You can search international news sources via Power Search.

1. From the General search screen (not our system default), click on the Power Search tab.
2. Select one broad news sources from the dropdown box, such as "All News (English)" or "Major World Publications (Non-English)"
3. Use the Add keywords option below the search box to pop up our taxonomy selector tool
4. Use the dropdown box to switch to the geographic taxonomy and browse to the country or region you want
5. Add the index terms to your search
6. Run the search
7. In the results set, switch the clustering to Geography

Dailies, weeklies and tabloid-sized serials: new retention schedules

• New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Herald, and Boston Globe: we retain one full week plus current week. That means that we'll have 8-13 issues on hand at any given time.
  
  These papers should be weeded (and recycled) regularly, on Monday mornings, by the Reference librarian on duty.
  
  
• Harvard Crimson: we retain, as before, 2 weeks.
  
  
• Cambridge Chronicle: we now will carry the most current week only (no backfile)
  
  
• Harvard Gazette: we will carry the most current issue only (no backfile)
  
  
• Chronicle of Higher Education (plus its several parts): 12 issues (most recent three months)
  
  
• Variety
  
  
• Village Voice