Nobody will dispute the importance of newspapers as information sources, whether for current affairs or for historical and reference information purposes. Within the time of my own career enormous strides have been taken in indexing and accessing newspapers, from nothing (except Palmer) to today’s electronic products. Not the least of these developments is the digitisation of and access to the texts of the newspapers: these may not be a cheap option, but for those libraries needing them (and that includes all of us in the academic sector especially but not uniquely) purchasing access to archived, regularly updated electronic full texts is essential. But there is still a place for cross‐title indexing. While this is well provided for business, company and other specialised information, general access is still needed in many contexts.
This CD‐ROM service offers just such access to 13 British newspapers: The Times, The Sunday Times, Financial Times, The Independent, Independent on Sunday, The Times Literary Supplement, The Times Educational Supplement, The Times Educational Supplement Scotland, The Times Higher Educational Supplement, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian and The Observer. Indexed are articles, photo captions, tables, graphs, company announcements, Reuters information, financial details and obituaries. As this is a general indexing service, records displayed on screen give full location and source data and a very brief abstract, but no further reference to the full text, so that the user must access that by other means, whether hard copy or electronic.
The system installed quickly and without difficulty and is very easy to use. “Start” takes the user to the main search screen, where terms may be entered under specific fields (headline, category, abstract, key terms, newspaper, date, journalist, page, column) or with a general search under the “all text fields” option. Searches may be made directly by keying in terms within any field or fields, and Boolean operators may be used. Alternatively, a double click on a field name brings up the contents list of that field from which selection may be made. In that respect, the “key terms” feature was especially useful for a search on British Airways, where the airline name features as a key term which (with three subsidiary headings) gives 95 hits in all. A free text search requires the searcher to remember that for most newspapers “British Airways” becomes “BA”; a search here produces 127 hits, and a headline search 76.
The resulting records may be presented as a summary list with three lines each: newspaper (date in margin), by‐line or category (“Business and finance”, “Home news”, etc.) and headline. A double click on a selected item brings up its full entry on to a screen, adding page and column location, key terms and very brief “abstract” (actually one or at the most two lines expanding or clarifying the headline). Fairly large data sets (especially as the service cumulates towards its five‐year coverage) may thus not only be identified, but can also be used and manipulated with all the usual electronic convenience.
Those of us who recall the days of reference work before even Research Index can only marvel at the ease of it all. The sources for this product are all major titles of the most reputable journalism in the UK, so that their cumulated texts are major documentary sources in any context. Most, if not all, are available individually in full‐text electronic versions: the advantage with this product is that it can search across the range of titles at once. The user has still to find the full text as a separate exercise, but the initial subject searching is straightforward. The screens are clear and well designed with sensibly restrained use of colour and avoiding clutter. Searching and using the database proved easy, with clear instructions and on‐screen buttons, and with help screens available.
This will prove a valuable aid to research in many contexts, certainly in major reference and academic libraries (at any level) to aid project work and research into contemporary topics. As such it will also be of value in other collections where broad subject or source access is required to more than just the usual business, financial or company information offered by many other services. The disk under review carried one quarter’s data: quarterly cumulations leading to a five‐year archive disk will obviously offer an excellent and wide‐ranging resource, although with correspondingly larger groups of hits to deal with.
