science

NewsBank

NewsBank is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand NewsBank rather than just read about it. In short: NewsBank Inc. is a US-based commercial company founded in 1972 that operates a global news database resource providing online archives of media publications as reference materials to libraries. As of 2024 it includes current and archived information from thousands of newspapers, videos, broadcast transcripts, journals, and other publications.

Key takeaways

NewsBank belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect NewsBank to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of NewsBank from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

NewsBank Inc. is a US-based commercial company founded in 1972 that operates a global news database resource providing online archives of media publications as reference materials to libraries. As of 2024 it includes current and archived information from thousands of newspapers, videos, broadcast transcripts, journals, and other publications.

History John Naisbitt, the author of the book Megatrends, founded NewsBank. The company was launched in 1972. NewsBank was bought from Naisbitt by Daniel S. Jones, who subsequently became its president. Naisbitt left NewsBank in 1973. In 1983, NewsBank acquired Readex. With the completion of the merger, NewsBank had acquired one of the earliest organizations in America to archive microform. The company's headquarters in 1986 was in New Canaan, Connecticut. In that year, NewsBank had 100 in-house employees, while another 100 employees worked from home and traveled to the company's headquarters, bringing back newspapers to their residence from there, and then coming back to the company with indexed information on these publications. Chris Andrews was brought on in 1986 as product manager for CD-ROM. His job was to help the company transition from a paper format of delivery to libraries, so that its indexes and full-text articles were available in CD-ROM format. The subscription price for this service initially was US$5,000 per library. Visitors to libraries found that their search time was cut from 30 minutes using paper indexes to five minutes using CD-ROM. NewsBank used an arbitrary selection process for determining which news articles the company considered worthy for archiving; it based their selection on articles that were more likely to be widely appealing to a larger potential audience of future researchers, not simply stories of regional interest. In 1992, NewsBank had difficulty providing its users with a method to search for information based upon a specific location. Newspaper results were listed by subject matter first and then subsequently by location. At the time, it indexed articles via microfiche from more than 400 media publications in the US. The company announced in 1993 a CD-ROM product indexing full text of 35 publications including The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 1994, NewsBank was the only company providing researchers access to an index to periodical literature in the subject of theater, with its NewsBank's Review of the Arts: Performing Arts on CD-ROM. It started compiling the full text of articles related to the local economy of geographic areas and providing this information via CD-ROM to its clients in 1994. The privately held company was cited by The Information Advisor as bringing in annual revenue of approximately $19 million, and employing a staff of 350 people. By 1998, NewsBank provided indexes via CD-ROM to newspaper articles from over 450 cities in the United States. In 2001, NewsBank compiled the Foreign Broadcast Information Service index and made it available via CD-ROM. NewsBank joined forces with Micromedia, Ltd., a division of IHS Canada, to help distribute its products in 2001. In 2004 NewsBank maintained archival access to hundreds of media references since 1996. In 2005, NewsBank was structured in a pay-for-use format, with access differentiated for different types of users including public libraries, public schools, as well as higher education settings. In 2011 NewsBank reached an agreement with The Daily Northwestern newspaper of Northwestern University to archive all of its historical publications. The task archived more than 90,000 pages of material from the school. It included a plan to archive not just The Daily Northwestern but also prior related publications from 1871 to 2000, and index the material so it could be keyword searchable on the Internet. Dan Jones, President and CEO of NewsBank, had a prior relationship with the university, serving as a university trustee and president-elect of the Northwestern Alumni Association.

Coverage In 2013, NewsBank provided users with its service Access World News, which according to Reference Skills for the School Librarian was then the "world's largest full-text news database". In 2014 NewsBank contained over 990 news sources, covering U.S. state as well as national publications, along with television and radio programs. NewsBank's offerings include a "Black Life in America" archive. As of 2024, NewsBank holds current and archived information from thousands of newspapers, along with newswires, blogs, videos, broadcast transcripts, journals, government documents, and other publications. It is a global resource, providing online resources to many regions. The National Library of Australia, along with many state and university libraries in Australia, provide online access to NewsBank. As of 2024 the resource holds over 760 Australian sources, both national and regional, with coverage for most titles starting in the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s.

Location and people NewsBank headquarters are in Naples, Florida, U.S., and it also has an office in Mitcham North, Melbourne, Australia. The founding president and CEO is Dan Jones. His son, Danny (1972–2024), was the consumer division's first president, and largely responsible for growing GenealogyBank, while his daughters have also worked for the organization.

See also GenealogyBank.com LexisNexis Westlaw

References

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with NewsBank

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what NewsBank claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to NewsBank before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about NewsBank ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of NewsBank

In research: NewsBank appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses NewsBank in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: NewsBank is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1983 mergers and acquisitions, Bibliographic database providers, Bibliographic databases and indexes, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for NewsBank outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study NewsBank in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what NewsBank means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain NewsBank out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is NewsBank in simple terms?

Why does NewsBank matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study NewsBank?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on NewsBank.