NLA media access re-launches ClipShare for UK journalists

NLA explained on this blog in 2014 how ClipShare is a vital resource for publishers and journalists and outlined our plans to revamp the service for our (7,000 and growing) users. As a first step, we improved the search engine later that year, allowing users to poll results from over 45 million articles in sub-second times.

For those unfamiliar with ClipShare, it is a unique and invaluable desktop research tool for newspaper journalists and librarians. Simply add the relevant details for the search you are looking for – subject, keyword, a specific publication, a date range –  and all the stories that are found will be listed for you. The articles are made available as text or PDF, so that you view them in context.

There are other tools in the market that enable you to make historical and current searches of newspapers but none of these give you the added value of seeing the context of the articles in the same way as a ClipShare-generated PDF.

Now ClipShare has had a major facelift – an all new design. As well as being able to access the 10-year print archive of newspaper content, new benefits include:

-    Searchable web content dating back to 2010
-    Easier searching functionality
-    Cleaner search results
-    Reading list feature

 
Today’s launch follows a successful beta period whereby a select number of journalists at the national newspaper groups were approached to exhaustively test and provide feedback. Users predominantly described the upgraded site as “useful”, “professional”, and “modern”, and described the upgraded search functionality as “quicker”, “more flexible” and “more precise”.

We’d love to hear feedback from our other users now that we are live – see www.nla-clipshare.com  

Watch our tutorial videos below or on YouTube

We welcome new users as long as you work for a subscribing publisher. Email the team to find out more at publisherservices@nla.co.uk. If you are a journalist who would like to explore the NLA media access database, but doesn’t work for a subscribing publisher, you can use our public-access portal – www.clipsearch.co.uk