Hunting the Headlines

Frank Parry

https://learn.lboro.ac.uk/lb/newspapers/

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 Overview of workshop

 Why newspapers are important

 What formats newspapers are published in
 How to find contents of newspapers
 How to stay up to date
 Hands-on

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 Do you read newspapers?

 Online?
 Paper – paid, free, in libraries, your mate’s?
 What are you hoping to learn from today’s
session?

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 Why are newspapers important?

 Keep you up to date

 current events
 local information

 Social commentary

 Broadcast news and Internet new sites are

different from published hardcopy newspapers

 Layout of content is important

Know How
 Finding contents of newspapers at
Loughborough
 Browsing paper
 quality dailies
 few overseas weeklies

 Current newspapers
 Nexis - index to newspapers from UK national and local newspapers and
overseas
 Financial Times – ft.com
 Archive newspapers
 Guardian / Observer Archive -The Guardian (1821-2003) and The Observer
(1791-2003)
 Daily Mirror Archive – 1903 to date
 Times Digital Archive – from the beginning, 1785 to 1985
 New York Times – 1851-2006
 Archival 18th and 19th Century newspapers

 Internet - free access to parts of papers

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 Library’s gateway to electronic information
 select newspaper category
 range of indexing and full text resources
relating to newspapers is listed

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Click on ‘Search’on the menu at the top of the screen
Click on Nexis – Major database for British Newspapers
 Nexis

 Some papers available from 1983 onwards

 Has today’s papers uploaded on the day of
publication
 Can search for a subject in all British
Newspapers at once (except the Financial
Times which can be found listed under
“Sources”)

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 Nexis

 Nexis is a great resource because it enables

you to cross-search lots of newspapers
quickly
 However it is only text – you need to see the
text in the context of the layout and the
photographs used in the paper
 This is why it is important for you to read a
newspaper

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 Importance of layout

 The combination of different articles is also

important – the next slide shows two articles
from the Daily Mirror archive
 the one on the left is an apology to the
American, Steve Bing, for claims in a previous
article
 the one on the right purports to show that
Americans cannot understand irony – Steve
Bing sued again and won!

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 Internet Newspapers

 ... the way ahead?

 … what kind of news?

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 New developments – trying to attract
new readers with smaller papers ...
• The Metro – a free, quick read for busy
travellers
http://www.metro.co.uk/home/
• The i – the cut-down Indy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/gallery/20
10/oct/26/the-independent-i-
newspaper#/?picture=368056284&index=0
 We cannot show anything in this slide

The Times and Sunday Times are now behind a

paywall (soon to be followed by the Sun and the
News of the World).

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 Keeping up to date

 RSS feeds
 Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site
Summary

 need an RSS reader, e.g.

 Google Reader: www.google.com/reader/

 Google Alerts

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 RSS

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 British Newspaper Library

premier collection of newspapers in printed

and electronic form

Information:
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/news/index.
html
Catalogue: http://catalogue.bl.uk/ - look for the link to
the Newspaper Catalogue subset

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 Supporting material is on Learn at:

http://learn.lboro.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3
978

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