25 February 2009

More on Paper of Record newspapers

Unfortunately it appears finding of Paper of Record (PoR) newspapers at World Vital Records (WVR) reported here yesterday is not as good as it looks.

An entry in Google News Help reports "To look at a newspaper (on WVR), a subscription needs to be paid. .. I did a search on the Yukon World, one of the two Yukon newspapers once on the PoR website. My search on a name I knew would be in the paper turned up four hits. Great! I then clicked on one of the finds to "find out more" and what did I find? I was transferred to the same Google webpage one is taken to when you go to the Paper of Record database. And, just to make sure, I did a search on the advanced search facility on Google and came up with no entries for the Yukon World. Exactly the same outcome since the closure of the PoR website."

It appears that WVR was providing a consolidated gateway to PoR content for their subscribers which got broken when Google closed the PoR website. If you have a WVR subscription please share your experience with accessing these newspaper databases.

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