New York Times: Researching the Past

In a recent post Duke University Libraries had the pleasure of announcing that we successfully negotiated an All Access subscription to the New York Times: free for Duke students, faculty and staff.   Now’s a good time to provide an updated list of resources to research past issues of the New York Times newspaper, as well as direct links to the New York Times Magazine and Book Review.

DUL has more than a dozen platforms to access older issues of the New York Times. They include Gale, EBSCO and other publishers, covering various dates with different search interfaces.  This blog post focuses on only five of these research databases. Each of them has unique features which make them attractive to different disciplines, interests and approaches to research.

TimesMachine

The day after Black Tuesday, 1929

Pretend you’re at your kitchen table, smelling newsprint and coffee, crinkling open the New York Times on any morning  in the last 150 years. This is the NYT’s own digital archive. It’s included in Duke’s All Access subscription.   “Over 150 years of New York Times journalism, as it originally appeared.  Browse the newspaper archives, from Volume 1, Number 1 through 2002”.  One can search the archive by subject.  One can also skim the newspapers  by date, and see an entire issue in context.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times 1851-2019 & ProQuest Recent Newspapers: New York Times 2008 – present.

The advantage of ProQuest Historical and Recent Newspapers New York Times is that they focus the search on the NYT exclusively from these links.   The search results take you straight to the article as it appeared in the newspaper.  The search interface allows one to limit searches to particular kinds of newspaper articles. They are useful for narrowing searches, but also include facets like “birth notices” and “comics”. If those are your search objectives, don’t bother with ProQuest. Contact your librarian for alternatives instead.

Factiva

Duke University Newsstand

Effective databases are constructed to anticipate the thinking of experts who need their information organized in a specific way. Factiva is a product of  Dow Jones,  and a favorite for researchers in business, economics, and related fields. It’s up to the minute. On our special “Duke University Newsstand” splash page, articles trending in the NYT are right next to those trending in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

With the advanced search interface your search statements can be open ended or very precise, so the results can demonstrate your genius. If you need some extra help, see Factiva’s unique search feature, “Query Genius”.

Nexis-Uni

Top Industries affected by blizzards

Originally created as a database for international journalism, law, and corporate research (titled Lexis-Nexis), Nexi-Uni started with one of the most innovative, competitive search engines available.  Its reputation continues, and because of its sophisticated interface it’s compelling for any discipline.  You’ll need to do some digging to get to the Advanced Search specifically for the New York Times.  You can also specify a search by different sections of a newspaper article, like headline, byline or first sentence.

The search results can also be illustrated in graphs.  Results from a search “Blizzards AND Snow” show that Transportation and Defence are the top industries affected such weather events.

New York Times Magazine (Gale Academic OneFile) & New York Times Book Review (Gale Academic OneFile)

Searching NYT Book Review

There are so many different ways to get to each of these titles from the Libraries’ website, with so many variations in limited coverage, you may start thinking “how do I get there from here?” Use these two links in Gale Academic OneFile to go directly to the Magazine and Book Review.  Your search statement will automatically limit to the publication.  The illustration shows the left of the screen where you can search by date.  On the right is a search box which you can use to search by topic.

Another great option is Proquest’s U.S. Newstream, which provides full text PDF options of the Book Review and The Magazine. This option will allow you to replicate the experience of browsing these publications and provide you with images from the publications.

Many thanks are in order!  This blog  is an update of three previous posts by two former Duke University Librarians: Cheryl Thomas, and Anna Twiddy.   Ms. Thomas, Librarian for Philosophy and Religious Studies, is now emeritus after decades of service to the Duke University community.  Ms. Twiddy, former Humanities Intern, is now Student Success and Engagement Librarian at the University of Connecticut.