How Can I Look Like A Reseach God For Future Employers?
September 14, 2012 2:48 AM Subscribe
What are the best techniques for searching the web for past news articles online?
I just took a new temp assignment recently where my supervisor asked me to find an article in the Miami Herald concerning the lack of clostridium dificile vaccine facilities. All he gave me to go on was he thought it was in the Herald, it was about clostridium, and he thought it had been published during the last week of August, 2012.
My quick Google search proving fruitless, and all the Herald had online was a $7.50 pop to order back issues.
How can I search the web most effectively on something like this if asked again by an employer?
I just took a new temp assignment recently where my supervisor asked me to find an article in the Miami Herald concerning the lack of clostridium dificile vaccine facilities. All he gave me to go on was he thought it was in the Herald, it was about clostridium, and he thought it had been published during the last week of August, 2012.
My quick Google search proving fruitless, and all the Herald had online was a $7.50 pop to order back issues.
How can I search the web most effectively on something like this if asked again by an employer?
Are there any databases you can access through your local or state library? Or a nearby public university?
posted by unknowncommand at 4:17 AM on September 14, 2012
posted by unknowncommand at 4:17 AM on September 14, 2012
Could you phone the Herald and ask?
posted by synecdoche at 5:56 AM on September 14, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by synecdoche at 5:56 AM on September 14, 2012 [1 favorite]
It's a good idea to be able to at least do a reality check for this sort fo thing because your employer may or may not know if something is "findable" or not. So the first thing to do is start with a few questions of your employer
- where did you read about that article
- do you still want that article if it costs money to get
- would an article on the same topic in a different publication be okay?
Most of this stuff may not be available on the open web but quite possibly is via library databases. The Boston Public Library has a very large set of online databases which are available to any cardholder which can be anyone who lives in Massachusetts [there may be other criteria so check with your librarian] and most Massachusetts libraries will have a subset of these. Most are available online, some may be available online within the library. Nexis, a large newspaper database, is often one of these. If you are working in a business setting and especially an academic one, it may be worth seeing if they have any subscription databases and/or access to university libraries.
So to narrow down your search you might want to see if you can find anyone that cites that article to give you a better idea of when exactly it was published. In this case doing a Google search for some of your keywords [and spelling them correctly, or using shorthand like C.diff.] it looks like there were a bunch of articles on this topic (esp in USA today, as eytanb points out) around August 16 or 17. At this point you need to figure out if your employer really needs something from the Herald, or is trying to remember an article they read and is misremembering...
posted by jessamyn at 7:27 AM on September 14, 2012 [1 favorite]
- where did you read about that article
- do you still want that article if it costs money to get
- would an article on the same topic in a different publication be okay?
Most of this stuff may not be available on the open web but quite possibly is via library databases. The Boston Public Library has a very large set of online databases which are available to any cardholder which can be anyone who lives in Massachusetts [there may be other criteria so check with your librarian] and most Massachusetts libraries will have a subset of these. Most are available online, some may be available online within the library. Nexis, a large newspaper database, is often one of these. If you are working in a business setting and especially an academic one, it may be worth seeing if they have any subscription databases and/or access to university libraries.
So to narrow down your search you might want to see if you can find anyone that cites that article to give you a better idea of when exactly it was published. In this case doing a Google search for some of your keywords [and spelling them correctly, or using shorthand like C.diff.] it looks like there were a bunch of articles on this topic (esp in USA today, as eytanb points out) around August 16 or 17. At this point you need to figure out if your employer really needs something from the Herald, or is trying to remember an article they read and is misremembering...
posted by jessamyn at 7:27 AM on September 14, 2012 [1 favorite]
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I personally use Factiva, run by Dow Jones, but it is kind of pricey and only useful if you need to constantly track media.
posted by eytanb at 4:02 AM on September 14, 2012