The librarian is: BLOGGING | Journalism Library, Columbia University

Need newspaper articles that pre-date the stories in Factiva or Nexis (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates)? Curious what was happening in your neighborhood a century ago? Historical newspapers are proliferating on the web, so here’s a quick roundup of both plain text and scanned microfilm (actual page images) databases…

ProQuest Historical Newspapers (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) has become a mother lode for U.S. newspapers. The database, which started with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal backfiles, now also includes historical coverage of the Atlanta Constitution, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. The source of the database is microfilm, so you display articles as they appeared in the paper, and can even flip through the pages of an entire issue.

The Times Digital Archive (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) provides image access to the Times of London.

Accessible Archives (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) is a searchable plain-text collection of early U.S. papers, including the Pennsylvania Gazette, the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and a collection of 19th century African-American newspapers.

A great free historical newspaper on the web, of local interest, is the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, brought to you by the Brooklyn Public Library. It is a searchable, page image collection of the Brooklyn paper from 1841-1902.

This periodically updated report on exceptions to the First Amendment comes from the Congressional Research Service, and is archived on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, since the CRS does not have its own public website. The report summarizes Supreme Court interpretations of freedom of speech and press.

If you want to pull up the New York daily schedule from the AP, and are not in a computer lab with access to the ENPS system, just connect to Factiva) (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates).

Once connected, in the “Free Text” box at the top, just type the words

ny day schedule

exactly as they appear above. Insert no punctuation, quotation marks, search connectors or parentheses.

BEFORE running the search, look at the “More Options” section, towards the bottom of the screen. Make sure that the option to exclude “obituaries, sports, calendars” has not been checked (if it has, just un-check it).

Please note that the AP ENPS system in the labs is not a library resource, so questions about ENPS should be directed to the J-school technical team via trouble@jrn.columbia.edu.

If you are looking for the calendar of the NY courts, see this link.

Check out the Film Language Glossary (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates, you must be on campus to connect), brought to you by the folks at Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning and Columbia’s School of the Arts. Each term is illustrated with a film clip that demonstrates the technique.

Friends of Columbia Libraries is sponsoring a talk and book signing by Charles C. Mann, science journalist and author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Event takes place in the World Room at the Journalism School, at 6 p.m. on Weds., Nov 16.

Looking to search ethnic newspapers? You have a few options…

Via Columbia Libraries, you can access the full text of over 60 ethnic press titles via LexisNexis Academic (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates). TIP: Once connected, click on “Guided News Search,” then select “General News” as the category and “Ethnic News” as the source.

Columbia also subscribes to Ethnic NewsWatch (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates), another full text database, which includes both English and Spanish languages titles from across the U.S. The interface includes the ability to narrow your search by ethnic group.

In New York City, the Independent Press Association assembles the latest headlines from the ethnic press on their website (those not originally in English have been translated).

Lest you get the feeling this blog is only interested in electronic sources of information, I’ll add that the Journalism Library has a copy of the IPA’s ethnic press directory, Many Voices, One City, on the reference shelf at call number PN4882 .M36 2004g.

Columbia Libraries provide access to two different databases with declassified government documents. The Declassified Documents Reference System (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) provides the full text of U.S. government documents which are routinely declassified, while the Digital National Security Archive (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) includes documents which were declassified as a result of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Here’s an excellent guide to resources (both at Columbia Libraries and on the web) related to the U.S. Intelligence Community, maintained by one of my colleagues at Columbia.

Everyone has a favorite free reverse lookup website (don’t they???). Mine (by no means the best, or most comprehensive) is InfoSpace, which offers reverse lookup by both address and phone, accessed by clicking “search by phone” (that screen also links you to the reverse address directory).

Over the past couple of years, I’ve heard from increasing numbers of
students (some working on final touches to their Master’s projects) who want to retrieve temperature and precipitation data for a date in the past. So I am pleased to present to you…

The Quickie Guide to Finding Past Weather (While Remaining Unable To Do Anything About It):

For recent past (back to 2001), Weather Underground is a good, quick source. Just type in a zip code or other location in the search box. You’ll get the current forecast, and by clicking on “History” you can get temperature, precipitation and sunrise/sunset times. WARNING: Though the site seems to offer historical, the data earlier than 2000 does not appear to be complete.

For weather going WAY back, here’s a direct link to the site from the
National Weather Service that archives data back to 1876, using the Central Park weather station as an example. (If you are looking for weather observations from a different location - the other two are LaGuardia and JFK - follow the link to “Other Stations in New York.” These are the only active weather stations in the NYC area.)

Once you’ve found the page for the weather station that interests you, scroll down, about halfway down the page to “Forms,
Publications, and Web Pages,” you will see a link to “Record of
Climatological Observations” which covers temperature and precipitation (and is available back to 1876 for the Central Park weather station).

Note: Access to this data is free ONLY if you connect from a computer located on a campus (from a .edu domain) - otherwise, you may need to pay for it.

Searching for organized groups (whether trade associations, fraternities, or special interest groups) is made easier by Associations Unlimited (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates), a directory listing thousands of organizations worldwide. Use the subject search to enter keywords, or search by the name of a group you’d like to learn more about. Entries include the size of membership, annual budget, publications produced, as well as contact information (including website links when available).