Home

QUESTION: World News Connection

Submitted by Anonymooose on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 8:13am
question / pregunta: 

Dear RR,

Is the World News Connection database available at any public libraries? This seems like an odd thing, that you have to pay big bucks to use it even though the information is collected by the government and used to be available in print or microfiche at libraries. I have a NYPL account but it doesn't look like it's available there.

It looks like some private universities have it but that doesn't do me much good... although I might be able to reactivate my columbia account, now that I think of it.

Thanks very much,

Chuck
NoWarWestchester.org

http://wnc.fedworld.gov/

http://www.ntis.gov/products/types/databases/wnc.asp?loc=4-4-3

Answers

Answer posted by: christy

It looks like Columbia may be your best bet for access from home. I checked the New York State Library, New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library and none of them subscribe to the database. The Library of Congress does subscribe, but access is available only onsite.

Answer posted by: jbeek

A search in OpenWorldcat for [World News Connection] limited top "Internet resource" finds six catalog records, listing overall less than 100 institutions that have the resource cataloged. All of them are colleges or universities, except for the Library of Congress and the Joint Bank Fund Library, the library system serving the IMF/World Bank. If you are not student, you may still be able to use a university library if it is a state school or if it is a Federal Depository Library, which must allow the public access to the federal documents collection.

There's a Wikipedia article on the Open Source Center which is a good starting place for research on that agency, which is tasked to provide access to news sources for use by the US intelligence community.