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| Los
Angeles Times Tutorial |
| NewsBank
provides complete full-text content of
local and regional news, including
community events, schools, politics,
government
policies, cultural activities, local
companies, state industries, and people
in the community. Paid
advertisements are excluded. Students
have access to full-text coverage of the
Los Angeles Times from 1985 to the present.
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From
this homepage you will begin your search.
You have three options to explore from
this page.
You can go directly to the LA Times.
You can choose one of the Hot Topics
that LA Times has provided a link to.
You can view one of the Special Reports.
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Keyword searching seems to be the best
way to go. Take a number of
keywords that best describe your topic
and enter them into the search box.
For example, Madonna and daughter... Then
you get a chance to limit the search by
date. You can also limit the
number of articles to those written in
the last 3, 6, or 12 months. If
you don't want to limit the number of
articles, simply choose "All Documents."
Searching for articles about "Madonna
and daughter" written in the last 12 months
brings up 30 articles. Limiting
the search query to the last 6 months,
lowers the number of results to 18. Sometimes
your instructor will limit the dates for
you in your assignment; she or he may
tell you to only find articles written
in the last 2 months or that you may go
back as far as 5 years. Even
if your instructor does not do this, you
may want to use this feature in order
to limit your results. |
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| Los
Angeles Times Customized Search
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In
doing a customized search you can determine
where your search terms are
located. A few of the ways to customize
your search will be explained.
–– In All Text: Your search words will
appear anywhere in the text.
–– In Lead/First Paragraph: Your search
words must appear in the first paragraph
of an article.
–– In Headline: Your search word must
appear in the headline of an article.
In searching for Madonna in "Headline",
at least 200 records were found. For
the purposes of reviewing, 200 articles
can be time consuming. One
way to narrow down the number of records
found is by adding more search terms and
/ or by limiting the search by date. In
doing your searches, be as specific as
possible.
Searching for articles about Madonna
and Napster resulted in 15 records. That
is much more manageable, and the articles
are actually about what I need to research...
Madonna and her connections to, her opinions
about Napster.
In searching for Madonna in "All Text"
and daughter in "All Text," at least 200
records were found. Again,
the same problem as when we searched for
Madonna in "Headline" One way
to narrow down the number of records found
is by adding more search terms and / or
by limiting the search by date. In
doing your searches, be as specific as
possible.
Searching for articles about Madonna
and her daughter with articles only written
between 01/2004 - 05/2004 resulted in
10 records. That is much more
manageable. Not all the articles
were about the Madonna that I was looking
for. One result was about Alex
Madonna, another - Madonna of Excelsior. But
still, when you have 10-30 articles to
browse through, it's much easier to find
the few articles that you can actually
use. |
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Clicking
on the link will bring up the article
of your choice. As
you can see, there are no images or advertisements. In
the upper right hand corner, you are given
a few choices to work with such as: E-mail,
Text Only Display, List, Previous, and
Next.
Click on "List," and this feature will
display all the articles found.
Previous and Next just takes you to either
Previous or Next Article from the article
that you are currently reading. So
if you are reading Article # 10, clicking
on Previous will take you to Article #9.
Clicking on Next will take you to Article
# 11.
The final feature is utilizing the e-mail
option. Please keep in mind
that you can only send one article to
yourself at a time. Type in your e-mail
address and decide if you want the file
sent to you in HTML format or in text
format. All e-mail programs
are able to read text formats but not
all e-mail programs are able to read the
HTML format. It is always safe
to use the text format.
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a Copy of this Tutorial |
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