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NewsBank is a news database resource that provides archives of media publications as reference materials to libraries.


History

John Naisbitt John Naisbitt (January 15, 1929 – April 8, 2021) was an American author and public speaker in the area of futures studies. His first book '' Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives'' was published in 1982. It was the result of alm ...
, the author of the book ''Megatrends'', founded NewsBank.Andrews 1998, p. 17. The company was launched in 1972. NewsBank was bought from Naisbitt by Daniel S. Jones, who subsequently became its president. Naisbitt left NewsBank in 1973.McClellan 1987, p. 87. In 1983, NewsBank acquired
Readex Readex, a division of NewsBank, publishes collections of primary source research materials. History In 1950, publisher Albert Boni, co-founder of the Modern Library, formed the Readex Microprint Corporation in New York City. Some of the comp ...
. With the completion of the merger, NewsBank had acquired one of the earliest organizations in America to archive
microform Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. ...
. In 1986, NewsBank had one hundred employees in-house. Another one hundred employees worked from home and traveled to the company's headquarters, bringing back newspapers to their residence from there, and then coming back to the company with indexed information on these publications. The company's headquarters in 1986 was in
New Canaan, Connecticut New Canaan () is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 20,622 according to the 2020 census. About an hour from Manhattan by train, the town is considered part of Connecticut's Gold Coast. The town is bounde ...
.Andrews 1998, p. 18. Chris Andrews was brought on in 1986 as product manager for CD-ROM. His job was to help the company transition from a paper format of delivery to libraries, so that its indexes and full-text articles were available in
CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...
format.Andrews 1998, p. 19. The subscription price for this service initially was
US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
5,000 per library. Visitors to libraries found that their search time was cut from 30 minutes using paper indexes to five minutes using CD-ROM. NewsBank used an arbitrary selection process for determining which news articles the company considered worthy for archiving; it based their selection on articles that were more likely to be widely appealing to a larger potential audience of future researchers, not simply stories of regional interest. In 1992, NewsBank had difficulty providing its users with a method to search for information based upon a specific location. Newspaper results were listed by subject matter first and then subsequently by location. At the time, it indexed articles via
microfiche Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...
from more than 400 media publications in the United States.Anderson 1992, pp. 135–137. The company announced in 1993 a CD-ROM product indexing full text of 35 publications including ''
The Christian Science Monitor ''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...
'', ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', ''
The Dallas Morning News ''The Dallas Morning News'' is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average print circulation of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885 by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the '' Galvest ...
'', ''
Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'', ''
The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'', and ''
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the only major daily newspaper in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger between ...
''. In 1994, NewsBank was the only company providing researchers access to an index to periodical literature in the subject of
theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...
with its ''NewsBank's Review of the Arts: Performing Arts'' on CD-ROM.Sheehy 1994, pp. 158–160. NewsBank started compiling the full text of articles related to the local economy of geographic areas and providing this information via CD-ROM to its clients in 1994. The
privately held company A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...
was cited by ''The Information Advisor'' as bringing in annual revenue of approximately $19 million, and employing a staff of 350 people. By 1998, NewsBank provided indexes via CD-ROM to newspaper articles from over 450 cities in the United States. In 2001, NewsBank compiled the
Foreign Broadcast Information Service The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was an open source intelligence component of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Science and Technology. It monitored, translated, and disseminated within the U.S. government openly ...
index and made it available via CD-ROM.Sears 2001, p. 40. NewsBank joined forces with Micromedia, Ltd., a division of IHS Canada, to help distribute its products in 2001. In 2004 NewsBank maintained archival access to hundreds of media references since 1996.Martirosyan 2004, p. 160. In 2005, NewsBank was structured in a pay-for-use format, with access differentiated for different types of users including public libraries, public schools, as well as
higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completi ...
settings.Martin 2005, pp. 36–37. NewsBank reached an agreement in 2011 with ''
The Daily Northwestern ''The Daily Northwestern'' is the student newspaper at Northwestern University which is published in print on Mondays and Thursdays and online daily during the academic year. Founded in 1881, and printed in Evanston, Illinois, it is staffed primar ...
'' newspaper of
Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...
to archive all of its historical publications. The task archived more than 90,000 pages of material from the school. It included a plan to archive not just ''The Daily Northwestern'' but also prior related publications from 1871 to 2000, and index the material so it could be keyword searchable on the Internet. Dan Jones, President and CEO of NewsBank, had a prior relationship with the university, serving as a university trustee and president-elect of the Northwestern Alumni Association. In 2013, NewsBank provided users with its service Access World News, which ''Reference Skills for the School Librarian'' called the "world's largest full-text news database". According to the book ''Communication and Language Analysis in the Public Sphere'', in 2014 NewsBank contained "over 990 news sources, with each state in the U.S. represented, as well as national publications, television and radio programs."Hart 2014, p. 41. NewsBank's offerings include a Black Life in America archive.


Reception

The 2004 book ''Reference Sources in History'' by Ronald H. Fritze, Brian E. Coutts, and Louis Andrew Vyhnanek wrote that: "NewsBank is one of the world's largest information providers."Fritze 2004, pp. 107–108; 291. In her book ''Journalism: A Guide to the Reference Literature'' (2004), Jo A. Cates said: "NewsBank is a massive database, the NewsFile Collection alone providing access to full text articles in more than 500 newspapers, wire services, and broadcasts."Cates 2004, pp. 82–83. The 2013 book ''Reference Skills for the School Librarian'' by authors Ann Marlow Riedling, Loretta Shake, and Cynthia Houston called NewsBank a "popular indexing series".Riedling 2013, p. 93. They pointed out that NewsBank provided access to "an easy-to-search database of articles, activities, and lesson plans for the elementary and middle grades, covering key issues and events in every subject area."


See also

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GenealogyBank.com GenealogyBank.com is an online subscription genealogical service that provides access to records useful in family history research. GenealogyBank is one of the largest collections of digitized U.S. newspapers, dating back to 1690. In addition to d ...
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HighBeam Research HighBeam Research was a paid search engine and full text online archive owned by Gale, a subsidiary of Cengage, for thousands of newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines, and encyclopedias in English. It was head ...
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LexisNexis LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer info ...
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Westlaw Westlaw is an online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of case law, state and federal statu ...


Notes


References

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Further reading

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:NewsBank Companies based in Naples, Florida Online mass media companies of the United States Internet search engines Online archives of the United States Bibliographic database providers Bibliographic databases and indexes