Searching for news, continued
Earlier this year, we took a quick tour of search engines that focus specifically on tracking down old news articles. I highlighted a half-dozen or so sites that I'd found useful for hunting down stories that generally won't show up on search engines like Alta Vista or Yahoo.
Since then, I've stumbled upon or been directed to several other search engines that tap into multiple news archives at once. None is quite as comprehensive as I'd like, but maybe we're getting there.
Below is a list of four sites that are worth a look, plus a fifth engine that I should have mentioned previously. To read the earlier article, dated Jan. 31, click on http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/jour...
In addition to these sites, I'd recommend Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch as a good guide for general Web-hunting and for reports of new engines starting up on the Web. His site is at http://www.searchenginewatch.com
As always, I'd love to hear from readers who have sites they'd like to recommend. Just send me an e-mail or post your suggestions in the "discussions" area.
I'd rank this way above Newstrawler, my favorite at the time I wrote the previous piece. At News Library, you can search dozens of newspapers across the country all at once, or search by state or region. (One tip: I've found that breaking up the national search into small bits is more reliable.) The results are among the most accurate I've seen for a news search engine--there are usually few squirrelly, unrelated items listed in the search results.
Many of the papers are part of the Knight-Ridder chain, but you'll find some independents and papers from other chains in the mix. Most major U.S. and Canadian papers are here. You have to pay about $2 to actually read the articles, but on a few occasions I've also had luck backtracking to the newspaper's Web site and perusing the original for free.
http://www.lycos.com This one's hit-and-miss in my experience. Here's how it works, when it's working: Use the search field as you normally would, then click on "news articles" to generate a list of items snared from newspaper archives. Sometimes, the "news articles" link doesn't pop up, however. Give it a few hours or a few days and return because it usually reappears just as mysteriously as it disappears. The search results are generally accurate but not as on-target as News Library or Newstrawler.
I haven't used this one much, but I'll pass it along because it's one of the few engines I've seen that focus specifically on magazines. The site says it pulls information from "more than 300 reputable magazines and journals." (Alas, you'll have to turn elsewhere for the disreputable ones.)
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