The Times of India (1838-2001) database, part of ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers programme (which contains over 30 million digitized pages and includes databases of other international newspapers such as The Guardian), provides nearly seven million primary sources (e.g. newspaper articles, advertisements, etc.) covering material, as noted on the homepage, from 1838 to 2001. However, the database seems to have been last updated in 2006, as a user can set the date range, using a slider tool, from 1838 to 2006. There is no indication anywhere on the database that there will be an addition of the nearly 10 years of missing material, but articles from 2001 to the present day are archived on The Times of India's website (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/archive.cms) for free public use.
The database’s homepage, decorated with a few images relating to the Indian culture, is simple and clean and offers a basic search box. Jarringly, there is also a link entitled View Title List which opens as an Excel file. Perhaps the best use of this file is to see the “gaps” in content, e.g. where full-text articles and PDFs of articles are not available.
The main navigation categories are: Basic Search, Advanced Search (which provides Boolean operators), Obituaries and Publications. This database is not only useful for historical research but it can also be used for genealogical purposes because a user of Indian heritage, or perhaps British heritage, can search through obituaries by names and years of deaths. The Publications page provides three titles: The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce (1838-1859), The Bombay Times and Standard (1860-1861) and The Times of India (1861-current), and users can browse by newspaper issue within each newspaper title. From this page, it can be discerned that the original title of The Times of India was The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, which is useful if a user only knows of a specific article published in The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, for example.
Users should keep in mind that this database is biased; opinions are likely to be skewed in favour of British colonizers up until independence was obtained in 1947. The Times of India was British-published (the publisher for the three different titles of the newspaper, as listed on the Publication page, was Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited) and was (and is) written in English; the title of the newspaper is also borrowed from The Times newspaper of London. To shed more light on the inherent bias of the newspaper, a user could input “Enfield rifle” and/or “Sepoy Mutiny” in the search box. The introduction of the Lee-Enfield rifle to India in the mid-nineteenth century caused a stir of controversy because the rifle’s cartridges were greased with animal fat and the ends of cartridges needed to be bitten off to load ammunition; ingesting the animal fat (which was primarily from cows and pigs) went against religious beliefs of Hindu and Muslim soldiers, who, in turn, mutinied in an event known as the Sepoy Mutiny. Searching for either the Enfield rifle and/or the Sepoy Mutiny renders some articles in support of the use of the rifle as well as denunciation of mutineers. Perhaps a way to view less biased commentary on India’s history is to refer to a newspaper that has its roots in Indian independence, such as the Hindustan Times (though, unfortunately, it seems that this newspaper does not have digitized versions of its issues available online).
The Help link is thorough. Perhaps this is because it can be universally applied to all of ProQuest's databases – there is no specialized Help page for The Times of India database. However, the Help link contains some jargon catering to information professionals that could be daunting to the average user (e.g. “MeSH and Embase Codes”). An excellent feature of the database is that each page on the database contains a Help link, and each link automatically directs a user to the help topic that is relevant to the page a user is on. Other user-centred features are the ability to export articles and citations as PDFs and the ability to choose a citation style (e.g. APA) (although, there is not always complete accuracy for the created citation).
The intended audience is for both “novice researchers and information professionals”. The content can certainly be easily digested by any level of user. Features are straightforward, as is to be expected of ProQuest, which has a leading reputation as a premier product for research in institutions across the world (approximately 700 universities).
While The Times of India database presents colonially biased perspectives presumably up to the time of Indian independence, it is still a valuable source for users at all levels, providing first-hand narratives of historical events that can only allow for a clearer understanding of the Indian history.
