Magazine and newspaper news articles are great sources for trends, competitors, market size, distribution and more. You will have to be creative in how you search and patient in reading between the lines in order to put the pieces together.
Some of the news sources in our article databases are trade magazines. These are magazines targeting professional in specific industries. You will also sometimes find free trade magazines on the web.
When the library does not have full text of an article use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to order a copy https://ill.rit.edu/ILLiad/Logon.html
We do not. Instead we offer secondary access through ProQuest, EBSCO and Nexis Uni. The available articles represent the majority, but not all, of the articles published in the print versions of the publications. Most include text only with occasional images. For full and unrestricted access or subscriber only content look at subscribing directly. Most of these publications offer student or educational discounts. That said library access does provide a majority of the content.
Many public libraries do offer temporary direct access to nyt.com and/or www.washingtonpost.com. If you live in Henrietta, NY (this is where the RIT Campus is) You can get a Henrietta Public Library card. As of January 2024 HPL offers residents remote access to both nyt.com and www.washingtonpost.com. If you live in another area check your public library to see what they offer.
NOTE: Articles available appeared in the print edition. No access to via library to articles only published on the web.
What are these databases?
These are aggregator databases with lots of different types of periodicals and content. They contain academic/scholarly items and practioner/practical resources. Think about Netflix. Netflix is a video aggregator with lots of different tv shows and movies from many content providers. Disney+ is also a video provider but only offers content they produce. The databases linked here are like Netflix. You will find many varieties or magazines, newspapers journals and other info. Once you go in try different search terms and explore the filters given on the left of results lists. Watch the tutorials provided because these tools are way more sophisticated than Google and you may never have searched a tool like this before.
Many article databases have advanced search commands buried in their help manuals. Here are a few advanced tips for specific products that can help make searching more effective.*
Proximity:
near/# OR n/# will look for documents that contain two search terms, in any order, within a specified number of words apart. Replace # with a number. You can go up to 100 words but stay within 2-20 for better results.
PRE/# or P/# will look for documents that contain one search term that appears within a specified number of words before a second term.
Quotation Marks
Surround your words with quotation marks—to force ProQuest to look for your words as a phrase only, rather than finding each word separately.
Proximity:
Near Operator (N): N5 finds the words if they are a maximum of five words apart from one another, regardless of the order in which they appear.
Within Operator (W): W8 finds the words if they are within eight words of one another, in the order in which you entered them.
Quotation Marks:
When a user encloses search terms with double quotation marks (i.e. "global warming") the search engine looks for words in the exact order in any field in the metadata and full text (when applicable).
Proximity
Use the near/# connector to find documents with search words that appear within n words of each other. Use near/n to join words and phrases that express parts of a single idea or to join closely associated ideas.
Use the w/# connector to find documents in which the first word appears within n words of the second one.
Use the pre/# connector to find documents in which the first word precedes the second by not more than n words.
Question Marks
Proximity is a command to find words close to each other. This is helpful to find words close to each other buried in the full-text. For example if you want to find the words coffee close to the word forecast you would use a proximity command.
Boolean commands are linkage words that help you find or eliminate specific words in a title, abstract or full-text search. Common examples are AND, OR, NOT. In many academic databases use upper case Boolean commands to distinguish them as a command.
*Keep in mind product programming can change so consult help manuals within each product to confirm you are using the most up to date commands. Most databases with have a HELP or ? link at the top right when you are in the product.
Use of RIT resources is reserved for current RIT students, faculty
and staff for academic and teaching purposes only.
Please contact your librarian with any questions.
