Reference at Newman Library

Tag: New York Times

Problems with Records in OneSearch for New York Times and Wall Street Journal Articles

CUNY OLS and Ex Libris are looking into problems that CUNY and other schools are having with records for New York Times and Wall Street Journal articles. You may find that the “full text available” link for an article leads you to a page in the database that indicates the full text or the article couldn’t be found. If that happens, just go into one of the usual databases for full text access and search by title for the article you need.

With the New York Times, you may also see in your search results in OneSearch multiple records for the exact same article.

As soon as these problems are fixed by Ex Libris, I’ll post an update to the reference blog.

Planned Downtime for ProQuest Databases on 28 February

Beginning at 10 pm Eastern time on Saturday, February 28, and continuing for up to five hours, ProQuest databases and services will be down for planned site maintenance. This affects:

  • ABI/INFORM Global
  • Alt-PressWatch
  • American Periodicals
  • Books in Print
  • ebrary
  • Ethnic NewsWatch
  • Gannett Newsstand
  • GenderWatch
  • New York Times (1851-2010)
  • PAIS International
  • RefWorks
  • Wall Street Journal (1889-1997)

It may also affect the display of book jacket art in the catalog and OneSearch, as ProQuest also owns the Syndetics service that provides that art.

All ProQuest Databases Down on February 15

On Saturday, February 15, beginning at 10 pm and continuing for up to eight hours, all ProQuest databases will be offline for scheduled maintenance. Affected databases and services include:

  • ABI/INFORM Global
  • Alt-PressWatch
  • American Periodicals
  • EthnicNewsWatch
  • Gannett Newsstand
  • GenderWatch
  • New York Times (1851-2010)
  • PAIS International
  • ProQuest Digital Microfilm
  • RefWorks
  • Wall Street Journal (1889-1996)

This will not affect ebrary (it will be available during the maintenance work).

More details from ProQuest.

Additional New York Times Content Now Findable

Thanks to Ryan for the heads up about the blog and feed content on the NYTimes.com website that is now available in a number of different databases (Factiva and Westlaw Campus make it the easiest to find such content; Gale can be a bit iffy). A new box spotlighting this online-only content has been added to the The New York Times page that is part of the constellation of links on the main databases page. This page also now features a box with details about our limited access to the articles in the Sunday magazine.

Better Paths to New York Times and the Wall Street Journal

We’ve now launched a more streamlined way to let our users know about the options they have for online and print access to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, something that replaces the multiple links we used to offer on the Databases page and that now also provides instructions for how to read either paper in Factiva via the News Pages feature.

Instead of three listing on the Databases page for the New York Times pointing to three different links, we have one that points to a new LibGuide page. By removing the multiple listings on the Databases page, we’ve made things a little easier on the eye (and the attendant cognitive load) for the user. Similarily, we’ve gone from two listings for the Wall Steet Journal to one that goes to a dedicated LibGuide for that paper.

Each of these new LibGuide pages features:

  • a box with links to the main online access options
  • a box with info about where to find the print edition
  • a box with screenshot instructions of how to get to the News Pages feature in Factiva and how to use it to select a section of the paper or a different issue of the paper

This project was begun after looking at the search logs in Summon (AKA Bearcat Search) and in the site search feature of the library website, both of which featured a very high number of queries for those newspapers by name. We already knew anecdotally from reference interactions that students commonly asked for help getting to those newspapers. By looking at the search logs of Summon and the site search we could see that a number of students were mistakenly going there to get to the newspapers instead of using the A-Z journal lookup feature from Serials Solutions that the “Journals” search feature connects to.

With the publication of these new guides, students will be more likely to get a usable hit in the site search feature on the site (because it indexes not just library web pages but also all of our LibGuides). If students search in Summon for “new york times” or “wall st journal,” they’ll now see a “Best Bet” search result for that points to the appropriate LibGuide page. Try these sample Summon searches to see how that works:

NY Times to Toll Gate Access after 20th Article

Beginning in a few weeks, The New York Times is no longer going to allow visitors to its website to see more than 20 articles for free. Here’s the gist of the change, as reported in the Times today:

Beginning March 28, visitors to NYTimes.com will be able to read 20 articles a month without paying, a limit that company executives said was intended to draw in subscription revenue from the most loyal readers while not driving away the casual visitors who make up the vast majority of the site’s traffic.
Once readers click on their 21st article, they will have the option of buying one of three digital news packages — $15 for a month of access to the Web site and a mobile phone app; $20 for Web access and an iPad app; and $35 for an all-access plan.

New York Times access

I was teaching a couple of sections of English 2100 yesterday, and the professor wanted the students to search for newspaper articles, among other things. When they find articles in databases like Academic Search Premier, the “Find It” link brings them to a Factiva or Lexis Nexis search page. I was able to help them get what they needed, but they were confused when they came to another search box. Have other people encountered this? I know we can search the Times directly, but it would be helpful for the students if the link brought them to the article.