Popular and Trade Publications, and Our Databases

 Hello all,

I'm writing this to hopefully save people some headaches when attempting to locate articles from popular and trade publications (e.g. the New York Times, Washington Post, Education Week, Wired, New Yorker etc.).

While we do have access to ProQuest and EBSCO archives of these publications we do not have access to every article that appears within them or on their websites. For instance, while we have access to the main articles from Education Week, ProQuest does not have the op-eds or letters to the editor that appear within each issue. Similarly, the New Yorker seems to retain certain articles as exclusive to their website. For publications that put out daily releases like the NYT or WaPo there may be as much as a month's delay between an article being published and getting access to it through the databases.

At time of writing I have found no expedient way of precisely predicting which articles will be included or excluded in the databases. I expect that articles printed within the physical issues of these publications will be included, but as most people access them through their websites there is not a way of reliably determining which articles are web exclusive for all publications. Some publication websites will state this information somewhere on the article's web page, and some will not. You will have to do your best to investigate articles on a case to case basis.

If you are searching the databases for a particular article within a publication, my advice would be to first attempt to locate the publication within the Journal A-Z List, then assuming we have access to the publication try searching for the article by the author's name first and narrowing down the date range as needed. The titles on website articles often change for search engine optimization or to better attract reader's attention, however the title in the databases will remain the same as when the article was first published. If the author search yields no results you can then try searching by title, attempting to find the exact issue within the publication, or searching a phrase from the article itself.

 In the event that you cannot locate an article for a patron within the databases you still might be able to get the article for them. Publications will often grant a number of free articles to the public as a way to entice people to subscribe. If the computer you are using allows you to see the article in question you can use the "print to PDF" function to make a copy of the article which you can then email to the patron or attach as file in LibraryH3lp. If this isn't possible you can also direct them to try Inter-Library loan as they have been able get access to articles in these publications in the past.

Otherwise, express your sympathies to the patron and, if needed, gently remind them that we have no control over what gets placed into the databases. That is determined by an agreement between the databases' companies and the publication in question.