We all know that the Lexis Nexis, News service is the best, the gold standard, the cream of the crop. But, is it? As a Library Manager I have been looking into the new kid on the block, Newsbank.
Newsbank is from a US company but has a surprising number of British news sources at its disposal. Lexis is so expensive that many organisations are now looking elsewhere for their news needs. Does your company really need up to the second access to news? Or can you survive with it being a few hours to a day old? Maybe you need variety or local news. It all depends on what you need as a company. Are you researching over a time scale, need to find out what is going in your specific area? Whatever your needs, as an organisation you should review what is actually required, not what you would like.
The search interface for Newsbank is surprisingly versatile. Boolean searching is available with AND, OR, NOT commands and of course you can restrict your search by date. What is nice is that you can search within the last couple of years or from a certain date but not after another one. How advanced your search query is up to you.
From testing the service I must point out that you have to be flexible with the way you search for something. If you can’t find anything straight away then try a different approach. But then again that’s good advice for whatever search engine you are using!
A good example would be if you are searching for a phrase within quotes. I use this feature frequently in Google, but when I searched using this facility within Newsbank, there were no results. I tried again without the quotes, and there were a significant number. The phrase I searched for had both words together in the articles that were brought up so this must have been a glitch.
Another handy feature of Newsbank is the Alerts. You can set up an alert for your company and it will email you the results to your email address. With Lexis this will cost you more money but with Newsbank this is part of the service. This is a good time saver. Never feel out of the loop again!
Of course with Nexis, you get up to the minute sources, and with Newsbank it is behind – sometimes by 24 hours. But then it can be half the price. The other niggle is that you cannot send yourself more than ten results at a time. This can be really frustrating if you have 100 results which you simply must have a look at. You can just click the link to email more, but this is a hassle.
Lexis Nexis may have more newspaper resources, but Newsbank has their own selection of exclusive content. For local news, I believe Newsbank is better.
If you live in Wales and belong to a public Library, you can access Newsbank for free. This may not last for ever in this world of cutbacks, but while it lasts, it is useful for A) evaluating the resource and B) keeping up to date on Library related issues.
I have also used the Proquest Newsstand service and this was my favourite until I discovered Newsbank. Newsbank by far is an improvement on the Proquest offering but it still lags behind Lexis Nexis with usability. With everything taken into account – I prefer Newsbank. It is versatile, easy to use and has a really good selection of newspaper sources.
I am currently a Library Manager in a public sector organisation in England.