The Park Library - JOMC 54 Pathfinder

JOMC 54 Pathfinder

SELECTED RESOURCES FOR NEWS RESEARCH

The JOMC librarian is ready to assist each student with all the resources currently available in-house, on campus and throughout North Carolina's academic, public and special libraries.

The resources available to students, scholars, journalists and the general public is staggering in variety and amount. Nevertheless, not every question has a simple, direct, fast, comprehensive and/or accurate answer. Further, difference reference books and resources offer differing responses, accounts and statistics for the same or similar queries. It is not unusual to find some so-called "reference" material out-of-date, incomplete or incorrect at any given time for any given question. Therefore, it is essential that students develop a growing and diverse repertoire of reference/research sources and information strategies. Double checking facts, assumptions and "conventional wisdom" is the one of the hallmarks of the better journalist.

1. Start building your own personal set of reference materials. Central among them should be:

The best dictionary you can afford
A good thesaurus (Roget's) [Note: a pocket sized-one is OK.]
Several style and usage manuals (e.g., AP Style Manual, Fowler's Usage Manual, Chicago Manual of Style) [Note: the old ones are interesting.]
Statistical Abstract of the United States (current year)
The World Almanac of Facts (current year)
The Almanac of American Politics (current year)
Several books of quotations (the Oxford or Bartlett's and others)
A good atlas or gazetteer plus all the local maps you can acquire and file
A good math text book, preferably one that does math the "old" way.

2. Next, get in the library "browse" habit. Introduce yourself to at least one new, unfamiliar reference book, newspaper index or government reports catalog each week. O.K., how about once a month? ... perhaps once a semester? You may even ask a librarian for a personal introduction. You may decide to test the reference sources by running one query through several reference sources. You are bound to note differences. Discover ways to accommodate these troubling, confusing responses. It is good practice for struggling with controvertible "facts" you'll face in your future professional responsibilities.

3. Develop expertise searching library catalogs. BIS (UNC-CH's online library catalog) for example. Most of you are already acquainted with using BIS to find books by title and author. Do you know how to search for materials by subject? Do you who assigns subject headings to library materials? Why can't you use any sensible word(s) when searching for all materials on a particular subject? Why are "they" making life difficult for you? The secret work with all the answers for subject headings is THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SUBJECT HEADING LIST. The three-volume "list" is next to most online library terminals, including the JoMC Library. Plus, there are ways to get BIS and other online catalogs to reveal their secret "indexes" of subject headings online...without even searching the volumes! UNC-CH Davis Library has over 5,000 books on journalism. There are even ways to get Duke and N.C. State to reveal the contents of their libraries!

Here are some simple, sample searches to help you practice:
? su journalism ethics [return]
? in su journalism ethics [return] (Note: this search will check the online index.)
? du su journalism ethics [return] (Note: this search will check Duke Perkins's Library collection.)

4. For local/N.C. news on selected topics, check the Herald-Sun Newspaper IND- EX from 1981-1990. This is the most comprehensive access to news, features, columns and reviews involving the UNC, local and state government, education, entertainment, crime & social issues, medicine & science and sports. After you get your relevant citations for news articles, microfilm for these news articles are in the JoMC library. Regrettably, this valuable IND-EX was discontinued in February of 1990. (Note: N.C. newspaper libraries are closed to public access. Unfortunately, this prohibition includes students; however, there are other ways. Check the following.)

The Daily Tar Heel has an index to selected people, issues and events on our campus. It runs about one year behind the current date. The JoMC library has a copy of the DTH Index. So does the N.C. Collection in Wilson Library. Plus, they have the bound copies so that you can read the identified articles of interest.
The Chapel Hill Newspaper does not have a library, but the N.C. Collection in Wilson Library does a few clippings from this newspaper on highly selected topics going back more than 40 years.
The Chapel Hill Herald (an edition of the Herald-Sun Newspapers in Durham) is not available online to the public. It does have, together with the Herald- Sun, an in-house electronic library. We hope to have online access to both these papers by 1993.
The News & Observer is available from August 1990 online from DataTimes. Our library is a DataTimes subscriber and can search the N&O, but the high cost limits our access.
The Charlotte Observer (from 1985) as well the Greensboro News & Record (from January 1990) are online from Dialog. Our library is a subscriber and can search these newspapers at favorable online rates.

Note well: before an online search is undertaken, a consultation with the JoMC librarian is require. Further, an Online Search Request Form must be completed before any JoMC student can be scheduled. And finally, all other reference and research sources must be exhausted prior to undertaking an online search.

5. For national/international news as well as business, financial, market and government and sports information our library has access to NEXIS/LEXIS. This online database includes the full-text (not always cover-to-cover) of The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times along with 60 other papers, 300+ magazines & journals and dozens of wire services. We also have online (via LEXIS) access to U.S. and states' legal documents and court cases going back for decades.

The same restriction apply for NEXIS/LEXIS as for the other online databases.

Not all newspapers are online. It is estimated that fewer than 250 of the 1,600 daily newspapers in this country are available full-text online. So develop alternative information seeking strategies. Check the annual news indexes in Davis Library for articles in these newspapers: The New York Times Index, the Washington Post Index, The Wall Street Journal Index and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Index. Once you select the articles you want, go to the microforms department in Davis Library (2nd floor) to make prints from the newspaper microfilm.

6. Use the CD-ROMs in Davis Library. Check at the Humanities Reference Desk to reserve "Newspaper Abstracts" and "Periodical Abstracts". These disks have 3 to 5 years of abstracts from major U.S. newspapers and periodicals. Select your search terms carefully. You can print copies of the abstracts that interest you, or, if you wish, you may download the results of your search to a disk. Get information before you start. If you have not used CD-ROM, guides are available.

Sample search:

(poultry or chicken) and contamination
(poultry or chicken) and plant safety
(poultry or chicken) and worker injury
(poultry or chicken) and lawsuits

7. Our library also subscribes to the online service, Dialog. This database has millions of indexed and abstracted records from thousands of scholarly, governmental and technical journals on hundreds of topics covering, in some cases, years from 1965 to the present. Several important files from Dialog are available on CD-ROM in Davis Library. A list of these CD-ROM products is in the material distributed to you.

8. Check the Serials Microfiche in Davis Library for current trade of professional periodicals on your research topic.

9. Check with the N.C. Center for Public Policy (Raleigh phone: 919/ 832-2839) for clues about features they MIGHT have published in its INSIGHT periodical on this topic. The Institute of Government Library has this publication and may be able to give you more information on selected topics.

On the national level, check with IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) about the existence of series or features on this or other topics. The IRE phone number is 314/ 882-2042. This organization keeps an index of investigative reports, features and series from newspapers all over the country. Give the librarian your topic, and he/she will search the IRE database to let you know if or how many stories are available. There is a charge for this service

10. Check with the UNC-CH IRSS (Institute for Research in Social Sciences) librarian (Sue Dobbs) in Manning Hall for clues on how to use the polls for data gathering. Do not expect to be "served" instantly with answers to your queries. You may have to spend some time learning what is and what is not available in the IRSS library.

11. Consult the Statistical Abstract of the United States in JoMC Library (and in Davis Library) under the your topic heading. Have synonyms ready to facilitate your querying. Not every word or term you think of will yield satisfactory results. Remember that the numbers following the headings are NOT page numbers, rather they are TABLE numbers.

12. Consult the N.C. State Data Center for statistical information on North Carolina from the U.S. Census. The N.C. Collection in Wilson Library has vital N.C. government documents on just about any topic of interest or concern to students and citizens. Get acquainted with this incredibly rich resource.

13. Check out the collections and super librarians at the Institute of Government and the Department of City and Regional Planning. The Carolina Population Library and the Health Sciences Library. INFORMATION RESEARCH AND RETRIEVAL AND ANALYSIS TAKES MORE TIME THAN IS SUSPECTED, even with COMPUTERS AND ONLINE DATABASES! are just a few of the dozen or so special UNC-CH libraries. What they have in their collections is staggering, amazing and accessible! The librarians are eager to assist students search their collections for information. Give yourselves as much lead time as possible.

Barbara Semonche, Director
JoMC Library
September 1993

Special Libraries Assoc.