Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these
O >>
Odd de Presno. All >> Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these
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AP Online
6 Two Killed In Nagorno Karabakh
7 Yugoslavia Fighting Rages On
8 Storm Kills Five In Japan
9 Afghan Rebels Going To Moscow?
0 19 Killed in Guatemala Quakes
MORE !8
Oh, a storm in Japan! Interesting. I was due to leave for Japan in
a couple of weeks, and entered 8 at the MORE ! prompt to read. A
screenful of text was transferred in a few seconds.
"This is for later study," I said, pressed M to return to the
menu, and then ENTER to get the next listing:
AP Online
1 Bomblets Kill American Troops?
2 No Movement On Hostage Release
3 Baker Plans Return To Syria
4 Baker, King Hussein To Confer
5 Madame Chiang Leaving Taiwan?
6 Baker Leaves Syria for Jordan
7 Klaus Barbie Hospitalized
8 Iraq Denounces U.S. Threat
9 Yelstin Said Resting At Home
0 SS Auschwitz Guard Found Dead
MORE !
Here, I used another trick from the user manual. Entering "5,6,9"
gave three stories in one batch with no pauses between them. Five
screens with text. If I had read the menu more carefully, I might
probably also have selected story 0. It looked like an interesting
item.
"This is enough of the Associated Press," I thought, and typed
G NEWS. This gave me an overview of all available news sources ("G
NEWS" is an abbreviation for "GO NEWS," or "GO to the main NEWS
menu"):
News/Weather/Sports NEWS
1 Executive News Service ($)
2 NewsGrid
3 Associated Press Online
4 Weather
5 Sports
6 The Business Wire
7 Newspaper Library
8 UK News/Sports
9 Entertainment News/Info
10 Online Today Daily Edition
11 Soviet Crisis
First, a quick glance at 6. The service presented itself in these
words: "Throughout the day The Business Wire makes available press
releases, news stories, and other information from the world of
business. Information on hundreds of different companies is
transmitted daily to The Business Wire's subscribers."
Then #7: "This database contains selected full-text stories
from 48 newspapers from across the United States. Classified ads
are NOT included in the full-text of each paper."
The list of newspapers included Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune
and San Francisco Chronicle (known for many interesting inside
stories from Silicon Valley).
Choice 8 gave news from England. There, I selected UK News
Clips, which gave the following options:
U.K. News Clips
93 stories selected
1 RTw 09/19 0818 YUGOSLAV AIR FORCE HITS CROATIAN COMMUNICATIONS
2 RTw 09/19 0755 CROATIA BATTLES CONTINUE AS EC PONDERS PEACE FORCE
3 RTw 09/19 0753 ARAB PAPERS SAY MOSCOW WANTS MIDEAST PARLEY DELAYED
4 RTw 09/19 0749 DOLLAR STANDS STILL, SHARES DRIFT LOWER IN ...
5 RTw 09/19 0729 EARNINGS GLOOM REVERSES LONDON STOCKS' EARLY GAINS
6 RTw 09/19 0716 SOVIETS NEED 14.7 BILLION DOLLARS FOOD AID, EC SAYS
7 RTw 09/19 0707 IRA SAYS IT KILLED TIMBER YARD WORKER IN BELFAST DOCKS
8 RTw 09/19 0706 BRITISH CONSERVATIVE CHIEF PLAYS DOWN TALK OF ...
9 RTw 09/19 0630 FINANCE RATES
10 RTw 09/19 0603 REUTER WORLD NEWS SCHEDULE AT 1000 GMT THURSDAY ...
The numbers in column four are the release times of the stories.
They flow in from the wires in a continuous stream.
Next stop was the UK Newspaper Library. Here, you can search in
full-text stories from The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Financial
Times, The Guardian, UK News (with selected stories from The Daily
& Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times/Sunday
Times, Today, The Independent, Lloyd's List and The Observer).
Searching the UK Newspaper Library costs US$6.00 for up to ten
hits. You get a selection menu of the first ten stories found. A
menu with an additional ten stories costs another $6.00, etc. You
pay US$6.00 to read the full text of selected stories. These rates
are added to CompuServe's normal access rates.
The news service Soviet Crisis was my final destination. This
was just a few weeks after the attempted coup in Moscow, and I was
eager for reports.
I found the following interesting story from OTC NewsAlert:
OTC 09/19 0750 FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE SOVDATA DAILINE IS LAUNCHED
This selection gave me three screens with information about a new
online service. Briefly, this is what it said:
"The SovData DiaLine service includes an on-line library of more
than 250 Soviet newspapers, business and economic periodicals,
profiles of more than 2,500 Soviet firms and key executives that
do business with the West, legislative reports and other
information."
It also said that part of the database was available through Mead
Data Central (Nexis/Lexis), and that it would be made available
through like Data-Star, FT Profile, Reuters, Westlaw, and GBI.
Undoubtedly, the name has changed by the time you read this.
Finally, a fresh story about the fate of KGB. I read another
fifty lines, entered OFF (for "goodbye CompuServe"), and received
the following verdict:
Thank you for using CompuServe!
Off at 09:03 EDT 19-Sep-91
Connect time = 0:07
Seven minutes. Fifteen typed pages of text. US$6.00. Not bad!
An overwhelming choice
----------------------
I am confident that your "daily online newspaper" will contain
other stories. If you're into computers, you may want to start with
Online Today, CompuServe's daily newspaper. It brings short,
informative news stories about the computer industry.
NewsBytes is another interesting source for computer news. It
offers global headline news from its bureaus around the world. The
articles are sorted in sections called APPLE, BUSINESS, GENERAL,
GOVERNMENT, IBM, REVIEW, TELECOM, TRENDS and UNIX. A favorite!
Newsnet is also available through Genie, ZiffNet on CompuServe,
NewsNet, Dialog, in the newsgroup clari.nb on Usenet, and various
BBS systems around the world. I read it through a Norwegian BBS
(EuroNet in Haugesund).
For general news, start with major newswires, like Associated
Press, Agence France-Presse, Xinhua, Reuters, and the like. You
will find them on many commercial services including NewsNet,
CompuServe, and Dialog.
FROGNET - The French Way
------------------------
If you know French, check out FROGNET. This French language service
brings daily news from Agence France Press, and often has added
excerpts from the French dailies.
FROG is distributed by the services of the French embassy in
Washington. It covers world affairs, European and French items,
assembled, naturally, from a French point of view.
The service is free. To subscribe, send a message through the
Internet to FROG@GUVAX.GEORGETOWN.EDU . It should contain your
answers to the following electronic application form. Replace the
%s with your inputs (This is French, right?):
NOM: %
PRENOM: %
NAISSANCE:../../..%
ARRIVEE:../../..%
DEPART:../../..%
EMAIL: %
ECOLE D'ORIGINE: %
QUALITE: %
ADRESSE DE RECHERCHE: %
PAYS: %
STATE: %
UNIVERSITE: %
RECHERCHE: %
MOTSCLES: %
DOMAINE: %
Complicated? OK, here's some instructions in "French ASCII":
* Pour les dates veuillez utiliser le format Francais
(DD/MM/YY). Arrivee: c'est la date d'arrivee dans le pays
ou vous etes actuellement.
* QUALITE: Etes vous VSN, PHD, MASTER, INGENIEUR, POST-DOC ...?
* ECOLE D'ORIGINE: Diplome obtenu en France
* PAYS: US, Australie ....
* STATE: pour les US en 2 lettres (NY, TX, CA)
* UNIVERSITE: actuelle ou societe
* RECHERCHE: Soyez explicite !
* MOTSCLES: (ex: Neuronaux, polymeres, TVHD...)
* DOMAINE: En 3 lettres confere nomenclature ci-dessous
Nomenclature de la National Science Foundation.
AGR AGRICULTURE
BIO BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
HES HEALTH SCIENCES
ENG ENGINEERING
CIS COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SC.
MAT MATHEMATICS
PHY PHYSICAL SCIENCES
AST Astronomy
ATM Atmospheric & Meteorological Sciences
CHE Chemistry
GEO Geological Sciences
PHS Physics
OPH Other Physical Sciences
PSY PSYCHOLOGY
SOS SOCIAL SCIENCES
HUM HUMANITIES
HIS History
LET Letters
FLL Foreign Languages & Literature
OHU Other Humanities
EDU EDUCATION
EDG Education General
TED Teacher Education
TEF Teaching fields
PRF PROFESSIONAL FIELDS
BUS Business & Management
COM Communications
PFO Other Professional Fields
OTH OTHER FIELDS
News is more than news
----------------------
After some time, your definition of the notion "news" may change.
Since so many conferences are interesting sources, they should also
be a part of your news gathering strategy. Check in regularly to
read what members report about what they have seen, done, heard, or
discovered.
By the way, professional news hunters have also discovered
this. Online conferences are popular hunting grounds for reporters
of the traditional press.
FidoNet has many conferences with specialized news contents:
ANEWS News of the US and World
BBNS BBS News Service
BIONEWS Environmental News
EL_SALVADOR Analysis and News About El Salvador
NICANET Analysis and News About Nicaragua
PACIFIC_NEWS Pacific News
PANAMA Analysis and News About Panama
BITNET has mailing lists like:
CHINA-NN CHINA-NN@ASUACAD China News Digest (Global News)
CURRENTS CURRENTS@PCCVM South Asian News and Culture
INDIA-L INDIA-L@TEMPLEVM The India News Network
PAKISTAN PAKISTAN@ASUACAD Pakistan News Service
SEDSNEWS SEDSNEWS@TAMVM1 News about Space from SEDS
TSSNEWS TSSNEWS@PSUVM Tunisian Scientific Society News
RFERL-L (on LISTSERV@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU) distributes the RFE/RL
Research Institute Daily Report. It is a digest of the latest
developments in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The
report is published Monday through Friday by the RFE/RL Research
Institute, a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Inc. in
Germany.
Some mailing lists bring a steady flow of news from various
sources. SEASIA-L@MSU - The Southeast Asia Discussion List - is one
example. The list is "designed to facilitate communication between
researchers, scholars, students, teachers, and others interested in
Southeast Asian studies with an emphasis on current events."
SEASIA-L defines Southeast Asia loosely as Burma/Myanmar across
to Hong Kong and down through Australia and New Zealand. Regularly,
it brings full-text news stories from Inter Press Service, regional
news agencies, and newspapers/radio. Some examples:
On Jul. 30, 1992, a full-text story from IPS: "PHILIPPINES:
RAMOS URGES REPEAL OF ANTI-COMMUNIST LAW." On Aug. 13, 1992, full-
text story from The New Straits Times (Singapore): "Schoolgirs
involved in flesh trade, says Farid." On Aug. 31, "ANTI-VIETNAMESE
FORCE TURNS UP IN CAMBODIA" (Reuter).
SEASIA-L also brings "underground" reports like "The Burma
Focus," a bimonthly newsletter published by the All Burma Students'
Democratic Front.
ECUADOR brings news from Ecuador. Daily news bulletins from
"Diario Hoy" are posted to the list. Send rone@skat.usc.edu your
subscription request.
Many CompuServe forums have news sections. If you're into Hot
News and Rumors about Amiga Computers, read messages in section 3
of the Amiga Tech Forum.
Consumer Electronics Forum has the section "New Products/News."
The Journalist Forum has "Fast Breaking News!" The Motor Sports
Forum has "Racing News/Notes." The Online Today Forum has "In the
News."
NewsNet's list of newsletters that you can read or search
online is long, and back issues are also available. For example:
Africa News, Agence France-Presse International News, Applied
Genetics News, Asian Economic News, Asian Political News,
Business Travel News, Catholic News Service, CD Computing
News, Computer Reseller News, Electronic Materials Technology
News, Electronic Trade & Transport News, Electronic World
News, High Tech Ceramics News, Inter Press Service
International News, International Businessman News Report,
News From France, Northern Ireland News Service, Online
Product News, Sourcemex -- economic news on Mexico, and
XINHUA English language news service (China).
The Inter Press Service's newsletter International News focuses
on Third World countries, and news from Europe/North America of
interest to these countries (also available through Impress on
Nexis).
Usenet brings news from Bangladesh, India and Nepal in
misc.news.southasia. The ClariNet hierarchy gateways newsgroups
from commercial news services and "other official" sources, like:
biz.commodity Commodity news and price reports.
feature Feature columns and products
canada.briefs Regular updates of Canadian News in Brief.
biz.economy Economic news and indicators
biz.top Top business news
books Books & publishing.
briefs Regular news summaries.
bulletin Major breaking stories of the week.
consumer Consumer news, car reviews etc.
demonstration Demonstrations around the world.
disaster Major problems, accidents & natural disasters.
economy General economic news.
entertain Entertainment industry news & features.
europe News related to Europe.
fighting Clashes around the world.
hot.east_europe News from Eastern Europe.
hot.iraq The Gulf Crisis
hot.panama Panama and General Noriega.
news.top Top US news stories.
news.top.world Top international news stories.
news.trends Surveys and trends.
news.urgent Major breaking stories of the day.
A feed of ClariNet news is available for a fee and execution of a
license. (Write info@clarinet.com for information.)
UUCP has which brings regular news bulletins from Poland
(Contact: przemek@ndcvx.cc.nd.edu).
Behind the news
---------------
In an effort to garner new subscribers and retain current readers,
magazine publishers turn to online services to create an ancillary
electronic version of their print product.
Their readers are being transformed from passive recipients of
information into active participants in publishing.
You can "talk" to BYTE's writers on BIX, and with PC Magazine's
writers through ZiffNet on CompuServe. Their forums function as
expert sources. Here, you will often learn about products and trends
sometimes before the magazines hit the newsstand.
InfoWorld, an American computer magazine, runs the InfoWorld
OnLine service on CompuServe. Enter GO INF to get to the following
menu:
InfoWorld On-Line INFOWORLD
WELCOME TO INFOWORLD
1 About InfoWorld Online
2 Read Current Week's News - 1/13/92
3 Read Prior Week's News - 1/06/92
4 Download Current Week's Reviews,
Comparisons and Test Drives ($)
5 Download Prior Week's Reviews,
Comparisons and Test Drives ($)
6 Searching Help
7 Search Review/Comparisons/
Impressions/Test Drives
8 Comments to InfoWorld
InfoWorld highlights comprehensive computer product comparisons and
reports. You can browse this or previous weeks' comparisons and
reviews, or search the entire collection. You can search by company
name, product, software and hardware category.
Britain's two best-selling PC magazines share the PC Plus/PC
Answers Online forum on CompuServe (GO PCPLUS).
PC Magazine, another American magazine, has several forums on
CompuServe. They also operate a bulletin board. People from AI Expert
Magazine can be encountered in the AI Expert Forum. Dr. Dobb's
Journal is in the Dr. Dobb's Journal Forum.
The Entrepreneur's Small Business Forum (CompuServe) is managed
by representatives from the magazine. Live Sound!, a magazine devoted
to the MIDI sound field, occupies section and library 9 of the MIDI B
Vendor Forum.
Time magazine has a forum on America Online. There, readers can
discuss with magazine reporters and editors, and even read the text
of entire issues of Time electronically before it is available on
newsstands.
The Online World shareware book, the one you're reading just now,
also has a forum. For information about how to join, send email to
LISTSERV@vm1.nodak.edu (or LISTSERV@NDSUVM1 on BITNET). In the text
of your message, write the command "GET TOW MASTER".
Chapter 10: Looking for a needle in a bottle of hay
===================================================
Experienced users regularly clip news from online services, and
store selected parts of it on their personal computers' hard disks.
They use powerful tools to search their data, and know how to use
the information in other applications.
Regular clipping of news is highly recommended. It is often
quicker and easier to search your own databases than to do it
online.
Since your data is a subset of previous searches, your stories
are likely to have a high degree of relevancy.
There are many powerful programs for personal computers that
let you search your personal data for information. Read Chapter 14
for more on this.
While secondary research can never replace primary information
gathering, it often satisfies most information needs related to any
task or project. Besides, it points in the direction of primary
sources from where more in-depth information may be elicited.
When your personal database fails to deliver
--------------------------------------------
Regular "clipping" can indeed help you build a powerful personal
database, but it will never satisfy all your information needs.
Occasionally, you must go online for additional facts.
When this happens, you may feel like Don Quixote, as he was
looking "for a needle in a bottle of hay." The large number of
online offerings is bewildering. To be successful, you must have
a sound search strategy.
Your first task is to locate useful SOURCES of information. The
next, to decide how best to find that specific piece of information
online. You must PLAN your search.
Although one source of information, like an online database, is
supposed to cover your area of interest, it may still be unable to
give you what you want. Let me explain with an example:
You're tracking a company called IBM (International Business
Machines). Your first inclination is to visit forums and clubs
concerned with products delivered by this company. There, you
plan to search message bases and file libraries.
What is likely to happen, is that the search term IBM gives so
many hits that you almost drown. To find anything of interest
in these forums, your search terms must be very specific.
General news providers, like Associated Press, may be a better
alternative. Usually, they just publish one or two stories on
IBM per week. Don't expect to learn about details that are not
of interest to the general public.
AP's stories may be too general for you. Maybe you'll be more
content with industry insiders' expert views, as provided by
the NewsNet newsletters OUTLOOK ON IBM, or THE REPORT ON IBM.
The level of details in a given story depends in part on the news
providers' readers, and the nature of the source. The amount of
"noise" (the level of irrelevancy) also varies. In most public
forums, expect to wade through many uninteresting messages before
finding things of interest.
We suggest the following strategy:
Step 1: Locate sources that provide relevant information,
Step 2: Check if the information from these sources is at a
satisfactory level of details, and that the volume
is acceptable (not too much, neither too little).
Step 3: Study the service's search commands and procedures,
PLAN, and then SEARCH.
Start by asking others!
-----------------------
Step 1 is not an easy one. Start by asking other online people for
advice. This may be the fastest way to interesting sources.
If looking for information about agriculture and fisheries,
visit conferences about related topics. Ask members there what they
are using.
If you want information about computers or electronics, ask in
such conferences.
| When you don't know where to start your search, ask others! |
| Their know-how is usually the quickest way to the sources. |
If this doesn't help, check out GEnie's Home Office/Small Business
RoundTable, a hangout of online searchers. Visit CompuServe's
Working From Home Forum, which has a section for information
professionals (#4), and the section for new librarians in the
Journalism Forum.
Patent searchers are a very specialized group. They discuss
common problems on Dialog's DialMail. Their bulletin board is named
PIUG.
Buy user manuals
----------------
Some online services send free user information manuals to their
users. Others charge extra for them. If they do, buy! They're worth
their weight in gold.
The user manuals from Dialog, Dow Jones News/Retrieval and
CompuServe make good reading. The last two also publish monthly
magazines full of search tips, information about new sources, user
experiences, and more. Dialog distributes the monthly newsletter
Chronolog.
NewsNet customers periodically receive a printed listing of
available newsletters by subject area, and a presentation of their
information providers. The NewsNet Action Letter (monthly) is also
distributed by mail.
On some services, you can retrieve the help texts in electronic
form. Doing that is not a bad idea. It is often quicker to search a
help file on your disk, than to browse through a book.
Monitor the offerings
---------------------
Professional information searchers monitor the activity in the
online world. They search databases for information about new
sources of information, and regularly read about new services.
On most online services, you can search databases of available
offerings, and a section with advertisements about their own
'superiorities'. Keep an eye on what is being posted there.
NewsNet lets you read and search the following newsletters:
Worldwide Videotex Update, Worldwide Databases (#PB44), Online
Newsletter, The Online Newsletter, and The Online Libraries and
Microcomputers.
The last two are also available as a database from Information
Intelligence, Inc., (P.O. Box 31098, Phoenix, AZ 85046, U.S.A.
Tel.: +1-602-996-2283). You can read the text on NewsNet about one
week before it appears in print.
These two newsletters can also be read and searched on Dialog
and Data-Star, as part of the Information Access PTS Newsletter
Database. Information Access is a full-text database with many
specialized newsletters for business and industry.
On CompuServe, you can get to Information Access through the
IQuest gateway to NewsNet.
Subscribing to THE ONLINE NEWSLETTER costs US$50.00 per year
(10 issues) for companies, and US$35.00 for personal use (1991).
For both newsletters, the price is US$75.00.
These newsletters are also available on CD-ROM. The disk
contains four databases: the Online Newsletter, Online Hotline,
Online Libraries and Microcomputers, Major Online Vendors and
*Joblines* with more than eight thousand full-text articles from
January 1980 until today.
The CD-ROM version is delivered with a menu-driven searching
program. Each word in every article and headline has been indexed
and can be located in all databases. The price for subscriptions
of the printed version is US$99.95. Price for nonsubscribers:
US$199.95.
The September 1991 issue of The Online Newsletter had the
following index (partial):
*****************************
*NEW & FORTHCOMING DATABASES*
*****************************
10) MULTIMEDIA CIA WORLD FACT BOOK (CD-ROM) [REVIEW]
11) NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS ON CD-ROM (CD-ROM) [REVIEW]
12) WORLD CERAMICS ABSTRACTS (ORBIT)
13) GENE-TOX (TOXNET/NLM)
14) UK TRADEMARKS (ORBIT) [RENAMED]
15) BRS ADDS DATABASES TO ITS OFFERINGS
16) CURRENT PATENTS (ORBIT)
17) NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE ON CD-ROM (CD-ROM)
18) ALUMINUM STANDARDS DATABASE [AAASD] (STN
19) PLASNEWS (STN INTERNATIONAL)
20) EPIC ANNOUNCES NEW DATABASES
21) DISCLIT: AMERICAN AUTHORS (CD-ROM - OCLC)
22) CROSS-CULTURAL: CRIME AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS (CD-ROM)
23) INTERNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICAL ABSTRACTS (CD-ROM)
24) RINGDOC (CD-ROM - SILVERPLATTER)
25) CODUS (ESA-IRS)
26) MOODY'S COMPANY DATA (CD-ROM)
27) FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (DIALOG)
28) INPADOC DATABASE TO BE MADE AVAILABLE IN JAPAN (DIALOG)
29) SOFTWARE CD: DESCRIPTIONS & REVIEWS (CD-ROM)
30) MONARCH NOTES ON CD-ROM (CD-ROM)
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