How often have you read a story about an important news event taking place in another part of the world and wanted to know more about it? Or what about wanting to know how world events are perceived in other parts of the world as opposed to the North American perspective? The Access World News Research Collection from Newsbank provides full text access to over 6,000 international news sources including newspapers, newswires and magazines.

You may enter keywords or phrases just as you would any other article database –

 

 

The real power of this database is the ability to take the topic you want to learn about and then pick the news sources you want to use.  You can start out broad and look for newspaper sources from all over the world, you may choose to search specific regions such as all of Asia, or you may decide to drill down to specific countries.  You may choose the countries you would like to search with menus or you can click on colorful maps that put the countries you are interested in into context with the rest of the region.

 

 

 

 

Finally, if you decided that you wanted to get a very local perspective instead of a larger, global view of an event, you can use The Access World News Research Collection to search North American and state sources.  Just as you can click on individual countries to find their newspapers, so you can click on states for regional stories and opinions.  This way you can read views on the Arab Spring from as far away as Kazakhstan, or as close to home as Delano, MN.

In full disclosure, the University of St. Thomas does already have two databases that contain the same level of international and local news coverage,  however after trialing this database I have to say that this beats them both in terms of ease of use.  If you have used either Factiva or Lexis-Nexis before I believe you will find The Access World News Research Collection a breathe of fresh air.  And if you have not searched either of those news databases then I think you are in for a treat.

 

Either way I would love to hear your opinion!  This trial will continue for three months so you have plenty of time to explore and compare it to what we currently own.  Regardless if you agree with me or not, I would love to hear your opinion!  Please send any and all comments or questions you have to me.