Advanced Searching

No matter which database you use to search for news articles, you can take advantage of advanced search features. Advanced search features can help you quickly and easily narrow down your search results depending on your needs. For instance, many students are interested in finding news articles for a specific area or even from a specific newspaper. Others might be interested in finding articles written by certain reporters or maybe during a certain time period.

Common Advanced Search Features

One common advanced search feature is the ability to search by publication title. If you’re only interested in how your local regional newspaper covered a topic, you’ll want to exclude results from other newspapers. In the Advanced Search section of your database, look for the drop-down menu by the search box that specifies where in an item’s record you want to look. The drop-down menu often defaults to everywhere, but you can often specify that you want to search by publisher or publication.

You can also narrow the time range of your results either in the Advanced Search area or even in the filters on your search results.

The image above is the Advanced Search page on ProQuest database U.S. Newsstream. Many advanced search menus will resemble this menu.

Special Advanced Search Features

Some databases have special advanced search features. For instance, World News Digest Links to an external site. lets you search by a country, people, or topic. This is an easy way to quickly see which media outlets in an area the database has and then to search them all at once.