The librarian is: BLOGGING | Journalism Library, Columbia University

The Journalism Library Blog has MOVED! This site is no longer being updated as of July 2009. Come find us at our new location:

https://blogs.cul.columbia.edu/journalism

See you there!

Welcome to the Journalism School, Class of ‘07 broadcast students!

This post duplicates the handout provided to students during the broadcast RWI research training sessions.

Master’s projects:

To locate broadcast Master’s projects from prior years, visit the index, available online at: www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/jour/masters/

TV projects are available to borrow from the Journalism Library (ask at the Circulation Desk for project title and year it was completed). Radio projects are also available at the Journalism Library, and online at: www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/radio/masters/index.asp

Stock footage sources (tips from Prof. June Cross)

National Archives website: www.archives.gov/research/formats/film-sound-video.html

Library of Congress (make sure to check copyright status before using!):
www.loc.gov/film/arch.html

Local museums and historical societies
Museums: www.ny.com/museums/all.museums.html
Historical societies: www.nyhistory.com/links/historical_societies.htm

Other resources of interest

AccuNet/AP multimedia archive : photos, text, audio, graphics. (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) This resource has AP photographs back to the mid-19th century, as well as audio content.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers. (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) This database contains full historical archives of the Atlanta Constitution, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post. It is an entire run of newspapers on microfilm, retrievable on your computer!

Television News Archive.(access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) The TVNA has been taping the nightly network news since 1968. While very limited broadcast content (from CNN) is available streaming on the TVNA site, the searchable archive enables you to see how each network covered events on a given day, how long the segments were, and even what advertisements were shown.

As you scour the city for your stories and come across the one that’s compelling enough to write for your Master’s project, here are some suggestions of places to do your research:

Finally, please don’t hesitate to email me for more guidance if you need it, or to set up an appointment for a research consultation - I am more than happy to help!

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.

Journalism Master’s projects are not individually cataloged for CLIO. To find a list of Master’s projects from 1995 to the present, visit the Master’s project website. On this site you can retrieve a list of projects by year, listed alphabetically by author’s last name.

To search through a list for a particular word or name, use the “Find in Page” feature of your web browser (located under the Edit pull-down menu, or accessed by pressing Control-F). Remember to think of as many synonyms as possible for topics.