Finding News Articles on a Particular Subject
The Internet has provided a great way to search for news articles relating to a particular subject..... if you can figure out how to find such articles.....
It's been said that Internet search engines can be the most useful--or useless--tools on the Internet. As one writer put it: "the Internet is an enormous library in which someone has turned out the lights and tipped the index cards all over the floor." There is so much information on the Internet that it can be overwhelming (for most users) to try to find what (they) are looking for. Finding information is easy...finding the article that you're looking for is more challenging.
What's Out There?
The first instinct may be to use one of the many search engines online. However, search engines are generally poor sources for current news. Some have developed separate engines and directories for news postings and these tend to work the same way as search engines. Examples
include: Yahoo News, Excite, CNN.COM, ABCNews.COMand Lycos Top
News. But if you're looking for topics that are not in the newspaper headlines, these may not necessarily be the best search options for you.
Where Should I Start?
There are many good places to search for the latest news stories from hundreds of sources on the web. The following sites provide good results for current event searching. And because they search only news sites, the results are usually focused and timely (see Online Research Advice for how they work).
- American Journalism Review News Search Engine
This online tools allows you to search various news sources, including Excite News Tracker, Associated Press (via the Washington Post), Infoseek Wires, NewsBot, News Index and Total News.
- Yahoo Daily News
Searches a variety of news databases.
- The Wired Cybrarian
of the most extensive collection of search engines can be found at the Wired Cybrarian. In addition to having links to some of the best reference sites, the Wired Cybrarian acts as a multi-engine search for news articles broken out into eight topic areas: Technology, Current Affairs, Business, Recreation, Investing and Finance, Media, Culture and Health and Science.
- NewsBot
Developed by HotBot, NewsBot's greatest strength is that it allows you to filter your search by date, so you can receive only the most current information. Newsbot then takes all of the documents that fit your criteria, sorts them according to their relevance, and returns a list of documents in the
form of abstracts and links.
- Ixquick Metasearch
Ixquick Metasearch finds the news you're looking for by intelligently searching top newspapers simultaneously.
Once you have a feel for the keywords being used in the articles, some other good resources include:
- Librarian's
Index to the Internet
- Newshub
- NewsTracker
- Paperboy
- FindArticles.com
A partnership between LookSmart and the Gale
Group, a publisher of research and reference materials for
libraries, businesses, and information technologists. Offers free access to the full-text of articles published in more than 350 magazines and journals dating from 1998. Search returns include article title, periodical, and
short description, with a link to the full-text, which is
conveniently and quickly displayed at the FindArticles site, though with numerous advertising banners. Visitors can also view a list of the publications indexed, alphabetically or by subject. Periodical listings include a one-sentence description and a link to their
Website. A very useful reference source, indexing many leading journals and magazines.
- NewsLinx
To many this is the best site to keep up-to-date on any technology beat. It's a page of deep links, updated in real-time, to a host of newspapers, trade magazines and websites covering e-commerce (and other topics.) You can also search the database to get real-time news
on any technology topic you like. The ads follow the copy, and the stories aren't "framed," so they're not stealing from copyright holders.
- NewsMaps
"Explore thousands of news articles and discussions, organized by topic onto an information landscape." You can click on data "points" on the maps to link to actual news articles.
Works best at 56KB and faster, and your browser must support Java."
- Periodicals.net
A search engine by the Library Technology Alliance.
What's
Best?
Finding what is best depends on what you're looking for. Sometimes searches on a general search engine may prove to hold the best information for your search, sometimes you may have to use multiple sources. As with any search, the more sources that you use, the more
information you will be able to retrieve.
Citing Internet Sources
When you are given an assignment to gather news articles, provide the assigning organization the name of the article, the date of the article, and the direct URL of the article, so that they can then access the article themselves. This is also important so the article can be properly cited if it is used.
Another great resource for learning to find news articles is the Information Research FAQ at http://cn.net.au/faq.txt
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