British Pathé releases 85,000 films on YouTube

Newsreel archive British Pathé has uploaded its entire collection of 85,000 historic films, in high resolution, to its YouTube channel. This unprecedented release of vintage news reports and cinemagazines is part of a drive to make the archive more accessible to viewers all over the world.

The unique collection of video was digitised in 2002 and covers major events, famous faces, travel, sport and culture and both the First and Second World Wars.

Nexis UK – news and business information database

The University Library is now subscribing to Nexis, a news and business information database that includes full-text UK national and regional newspapers. It also provides business information such as company profiles and industry reports from a variety of sources. Therefore, Nexis will be relevant to all students requiring news and business information.  The database may also be useful for language students as it includes a range of international newspapers, newswires and foreign language news sources. 

Nexis has a range of search screens for the different types of information sources it indexes e.g. News, Company Profiles, Industry News etc. Navigate between these search screens by clicking on the tabs at the top of the page. The Power Search screen can be used to create a customised list of information sources, which can then be searched.  On the Power Search screen click on More sources under the Sources drop-down box to browse or search for information sources (There is a Browse Sources tab and a Find Sources tab). Alternatively, you can click on the Sources tab at the top of the page. From here you can choose to browse information sources from a particular country or by language. Once you have selected a country, topic and language from the drop-down menus, you can browse a list of sources relevant to the criteria that you selected. You can find out more information about a source by clicking on the i icon. 

Click on the Help link at the top of the page to access a range of video tutorials that will teach you how to use the key features of Nexis including the News search page and Power Search. There are 10 minute in-depth tutorials and shorter 90 second tutorials.  

Nexis can be accessed now via StarPlus (search under the University Collections tab) or from the following link: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/cdfiles/nexis . You will be prompted to sign into MUSE if you have not already done so.

Nexis news service trial

We have a trial running to the Nexis online news service. You can search over 35,000 international sources as well as view the latest news and market reports. Features include:

• Company, demographic, and country information
• Basic level and advanced search functions
• A variety of newspaper archives from the last 30 years

Before accessing the database, you will be asked to read and accept the terms and conditions.
Please note, trial eresources can only be accessed on-campus.

Please let us know what you think of this database via our feedback form

New web pages to improve your information skills

Be sure to have a look at our fantastic new web pages on information literacy.

Find out what information literacy is and what it can do for you by watching the video ‘What is Information Literacy?’

Find out how information literacy can help you with writing assignments and conducting research. The pages are split into useful sections to support you at different stages: Getting started, Writing assignments, Research skills, and Employability.

The information literacy pages are one part of our Learning and Research Services web pages which have also had a face lift to make finding information easier.

Find useful subject resources, get help with research, find your librarian, and see how they can help you.

All from Learning and Research Services on the Library home page.

Lies, damn lies and statistics?

If you've ever doubted the truth of what you read in the papers (and who hasn't?) the Straight Statistics blog is for you.  Set up by journalists and statisticians from pressure group Straight Statistics,  its aim is to expose and correct some of the worst examples of  sloppy or garbled use of statistics.  Some of the examples are hilarious and make for a very entertaining and illuminating read.  You'll find here the stats behind Gordon Brown's infamous encounter with Gillian Duffy, the true cost of public sector pensions, and whether you'll really catch Legionnaire's Disease if you don't put screenwash in your car windscreen washer.

For anyone interested in this topic and in the kind of scare stories which the media relish so much, may I also recommend Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science.

Commercial Radio Archive online for the first time

Just received:  a press release about the launch of the UK’s first online commercial radio sound archive.  Thanks to funding from JISC of just over £760,000, the Centre for Broadcasting History based at Bournemouth University has spent the last three years digitising the noteworthy radio dating from 1973 up to the mid-1990's - preserving over 5,000 searchable recordings including the first hour of UK commercial radio in 1973, coverage of five UK general elections and the end of apartheid.

The collection is available online for researchers, lecturers and students
at the LBC / Independent Radio News (IRN) radio news audio archive which
gives access to the catalogue and audio of reports filed by some of the UK’s
leading journalists including Jon Snow, the late Carol Barnes and Dickie
Arbiter.

Among the 4,000 hours of radio are a number of historic events covered by LBC/IRN including:

• The first hour of UK commercial radio including the first commercial radio
news bulletin
• Broadcasts of the Falklands War, the miners’ strike and Northern Ireland
• The live reporting of UK election results from five general elections,
giving a unique sense of the political shaping of the country
• News related to the whole of the Thatcher government
• The whole of the 'Decision Makers' series 1974-86: weekly 30-minute
programmes of political and current affairs analysis which provide a unique
insight into politics and its reportage within the UK at the time
• State President PW Botha’s speech at the opening of the South African
parliament in which he announced that the era of apartheid was over, with
political and journalistic analysis of this event.

The archive was unveiled by internationally-acclaimed broadcaster, radio
historian and academic, Professor Seàn Street, at the Radio Centre in London.

He said: “This was at a time before the Broadcasting Act of 1990 which
brought significant change to the structure of British broadcasting.  The
change in commercial radio since this period is extraordinary. It is
impossible for the young student of radio, born since this time, to imagine
that such independently funded radio could have existed. As a result, it is
vitally important that these programmes be preserved, as part of the
evolving history of post-war British broadcasting.

“This archive forms an important part of the history of radio broadcasting
since it provides an alternative source of radio journalism and news and
current affairs broadcasts to the BBC’s own collection,” he concluded.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports - free!

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Report has been purchased by JISC Collections and is available free of charge to UK Higher and Further Education institutions and Research Councils as part of the UK National Academic Archive.

Covering the period 1974–1996 in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe, the JISC selection of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports includes a wealth of transcripts of broadcasts and news from around the world all translated into the English language.

The FBIS Daily Report series:

• contains significant, critical material unavailable from any other source. The newspaper, short-wave, radio, and television broadcast texts in many cases exist nowhere else but in the English transcription or translation of those broadcasts which have vanished into the airways.


• shows what the US government knew from the open source intelligence and when they knew it.


• shows what the world thought of the U.S. and its democratic allies, “the West,” in often harsh and critical assessments.

The FBIS Daily Report has been the United States' principal record of
political and historical open source intelligence for nearly 70 years.
it provides an archive of translated broadcasts, news agency
transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from
around the world. It also includes many firsthand reports of events as
they occurred.

The archive collection covers the following regions and dates:

* Middle East and North Africa, 1974-1987
* Near East and South Asia, 1987-1996
* South Asia, 1980-1987
* Sub-Saharan Africa, 1974-1980
* Africa, 1987-1996
* Eastern Europe, 1974-1996