ClipShare: For researching UK newspaper archives

What is it? An online database from NLA media access that allows its users to search through newspaper articles published within the last decade, relaunched today with a new design and updated to include online articles published since 2010.

How is it of use to journalists? Looking for context around a particular subject or for potential case studies? ClipShare is a searchable database of around 150 UK print titles and the national UK newspaper websites, revamped today by NLA.

It's free to use for journalists employed by publishers signed up to NLA (formerly known as the Newspaper Licensing Agency), so that's anyone at Trinity Mirror, News UK, the Independent, the Telegraph, Associated Newspapers, Northern & Shell, the Guardian, Johnston Press, Newsquest and the Financial Times.

Freelance journalists and reporters who work for other media organisations can search clips around any subject or browse for free on sister site ClipSearch, which covers national and regional newspaper articles starting from 2006.

Individual clips can be accessed on a pay-as-you go basis or with daily, monthly or yearly passes, and once registered to ClipSearch, you get 3 credits to use on the site. You can buy a specific article or the full page the article appeared on, each option costing a different number of credits.

ClipSearch was not included in today's update, but it features similar advanced search, browsing and alert options to ClipShare, allowing users to filter search results based on key words, publication dates, relevance and more, as well as to save common searches to reuse the settings later.

So what does the new ClipShare look like?


Screenshot from ClipShare.

Users can either browse the archive of a chosen title, or research a specific topic applying ClipShare's search filters.

There's an option for a quick search from the main page, using keywords or looking for specific authors or phrases, and narrowing down the time-frame to the last seven days.

Once you click search and get your results, there's an option to refine them and drill further down into the coverage to get a more focused picture of your topic or case study.

You can filter results by date of publication, the newspaper, the parent media organisation, the category and even the word count.


Screenshot from ClipShare.

You can also save search criteria you are likely to need again to your profile, and add any results to a reading list to bookmark for later. These options are available in the drop-down menu labelled 'other actions' in the upper right-hand corner of your results page.

You can find your reading list, archive and saved searches by clicking on the 'My ClipShare' option in the main menu – and you can even set up email alerts for your saved searches in this section.

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