10ea Newspaper Abstracts Database Guide NOTE: Use of this database is limited to people affiliated with OhioLINK member institutions. WHAT IS NEWSPAPER ABSTRACTS? Newspaper Abstracts gives you citations and 25-word abstracts for articles published in 27 U.S. newspapers since 1989. It is updated weekly. Afro-American Chicago Tribune Michigan Chronicle American Banker Christian Science Mon New York Times American Muslim Jrnl Denver Post San Francisco Chronicle Amsterdam News Detroit News St. Louis Dispatch Atlanta Constitution Guardian Times-Picayune Atlanta Journal Houston Post USA Today Boston Globe Journal & Guide Wall Street Jrnl East Ed Call & Post Los Angeles Sentinel Washington Post Chicago Defender Los Angeles Times Washington Times HOW TO ACCESS NEWSPAPER ABSTRACTS 1. Access Newspaper Abstracts from your local library system or telnet to OhioLINK: telnet cat.ohiolink.edu Login: ohiolink 2. Choose "Research Databases" from the OhioLINK main menu and select Newspaper Abstracts. Newspaper Abstracts covers a variety of subjects including: arts and entertainment business and finance computers law and legislation leisure news politics and foreign affairs science and technology social sciences religion You can search the database by these categories: article author article title newspaper title words in article titles, subjects, and names of people/places/organizations SEARCH HINTS *Press ESC to return to the previous screen. *You do not need to press to activate menu options. *Use specific search words whenever possible. For example: AIDS (rather than virus or disease) *Use your own words. If nothing useful is found, try to think of synonyms or alternative ways to express concepts. Refer to a thesaurus or dictionary. *To search for words with the same root or initial letters (this practice is called truncation), type an asterisk (*) at the end of the root. For example: use* will find use, uses, used and user. *In a WORDS search, two or more words can be entered to retrieve articles that include both words. For example: evaluation computers will find articles about the evaluation of computers. *Type a vertical bar (|) after one-word titles. This saves time finding other titles that contain the search word as part of a longer title. EXPANDING A SEARCH Type OR between words with similar meaning to expand the number of items found for browsing. You will get articles containing EITHER word. For example: cars or automobiles You can use an asterisk to retrieve all words with the same root. For example: medic* finds medicine, medical, medicinal, etc. NARROWING A SEARCH If you retrieve too many results, you can reduce the result set by applying more specific criteria. Using the "L>Limit" option from the bottom of the screen (you may need to select "O>Other options" to find "L>Limit"), specify criteria such as year of publication or words in the subject, author, or title. Specify all desired limits BEFORE selecting "F>Find". EXPORTING A SEARCH "Exporting a Search" means that you can save the results of your search on diskette or hard disk for later use. This feature requires that you are working on a workstation that has capture capability (e.g. Kermit, NCSA Telnet, etc.) and a floppy drive or hard disk. See the guide "Downloading Records from OhioLINK-I" for full instructions. These are the basic steps for exporting: 1. Choose E>Export from the bottom of any search result to place it in a temporary save file. You can save as many files as will fit on your diskette. 2. IMPORTANT: When you are finished saving files and are ready to exit Newspaper Abstracts, choose E>Export/VIEW Save File from the Newspaper Abstracts main menu to send all of the saved files to diskette or hard disk. ### Written by Elizabeth Timmons, Director of Publications, OhioLINK For more information: info@ohiolink.edu Copyright 1994 Wright State University . 0