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In the past we have reported on reporters' use of the archive (see here). This month, we'd like to introduce the use of the archive as a valuable tool for you or your staff to employ in the process of writing news releases, and to examine the advanced search techniques that will help you get the most out of the archive. The Newswise release archive could be used as a resource for background on topics you are researching. It also might help define what is new or emerging in a particular area of research, for example.
The archive has more than 38,000 articles going back more than seven years. The best way to manage this archive is to use the "Search" page, accessible from the left hand navigation column under "Libraries," or by clicking here.
This advanced search page allows you to select the library, date range, or institution. You may specify words and phrases from the full text, of course, but over and above this, the "search tips" page—available via a link in the upper left of the search page—will help you craft more powerful searches. For example, two characters (" and +) are particularly helpful.
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More Powerful Search Techniques
" — the quotation mark
To find an exact phrase, such as "red wine," surround the phrase with double quotes
+ — the plus sign
To require that a given word or phrase be included, precede the word or phrase with a plus sign. For example, notice the difference between the following two searches:
"red wine" heart
this search will return all articles that contain either the phrase "red wine" or the word "heart," or both—however, those that contain both will be ranked higher by relevance.
+"red wine" +heart
by inserting a plus sign before both the phrase and the word, the articles returned must contain both the phrase "red wine" and the word "heart".
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Another example: Searching for "cell phone" finds more than 100 stories. However, searching for +"cell phone" +driver yields 7 articles. Both the term "cell phone" and the word "driver" must both be present in the article for it to be found.
You may then sort the found set of articles either by relevance (the default sort) or by date. When sorted by date, the recent piece by Lee Siegel from the University of Utah, which received such widespread coverage, shows up at the top.
One last example: A search on "tsunami" found 62 articles. Sorting by date showed that 32 of these were submitted since Dec 28, 2004, when Johns Hopkins University contributed the first release featuring experts on that date after the catastrophe in the Indian Ocean. Tsunamis remain in the news, and news releases on this topic are continuing to be contributed and effective. A release submitted as late as Jan 24 by Cornell University already has more than 2000 hits. The hit counts on tsunami releases varies widely.
The archive is full text searchable; every word in the release is indexed, other than articles and conjunctions, for example.
You may also look at all of the contributions from your own institution at any time by clicking on "Manage Articles" on the navigation column under "PIO Tools". You must first login to see these options, of course.
Our newest feature allows you to view "Real-Time Hit Counts" on your contributions immediately after they are contributed. Clearly, the hit counts begin to peak after the wire distribution, but you can see activity immediately.
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