City Newspaper Help                                     

Search: The City Index allows for keyword searching across all fields, as well as individually in the title, author, name, subject, and section fields.  For example, an all fields search for “Rochester City Schools” will generate a list of results that includes all three words in each entry.  It is not searched as a phrase but instead as individual words within the field you have selected to search. An All Fields search will generate the largest number of results as the search engine is delivering citations displaying your search words in any of the search fields.  Searching for your term in select fields of the record will limit your search results to just appearances in that field.

Thesaurus:  The City Newspaper Online Index operates with a built in thesaurus functionality for many names common to the Rochester area.  The thesaurus will search variations of both personal names and those of organizations. For example, a search of Bill Johnson will also bring up William Johnson and RIT will also bring up Rochester Institute of Technology.

Refining your Search:  Your initial search terms are displayed above the blue search box (with a red X to the left of your terms).  You now have the option of refining your search by adding subsequent terms.  The drop down menu at the far left allows you to choose one of three Boolean operators:  And, Or, Not.

     Using the word “and” to connect multiple search terms will refine your search because you are instructing the search engine to return results with both terms in the citation. 

     Using the word “or” to connect multiple search terms will expand your search because you are essentially telling the search engine that either, not both, of your terms are acceptable.

     Using of the word “not” will also limit your search results because using “not” is eliminating certain terms from your search results. 
Click ”Refine” once you’ve added your terms.

Subcategories:  On the left sidebar of the screen, the subcategories of a record are displayed.  The subcategories are:  Section, Name, Subject, Author, and Year.  Within each subcategory, a number of facets are listed.  Facets differ depending on the subcategory:

• Section facets are the types of sections in the City Newspaper
• Name facets are all the names that appear within the article
• Subject facets are all the subject headings assigned to the record.
• Author facets are names of the authors
• Year facets are the publication year of the record

Each facet is followed by the number of specific records that include that facet.  For example, in the Rochester City Schools search, there are facets listing the number of articles that are columns, cover/feature stories, editorial/commentary, news articles, etc. 

Sorting of Results:  Results are sorted by a relevance ranking by default.  There are options to change the order of results to a date order in either ascending or descending order in the upper right, just above the top of the results list.

COinS aware:  The City Newspaper Index is a COinS aware database.  It is open URL compliant, using COinS (ContextObjects in Spans) to allow for the use of citation management software and open URL link servers.

Locating Articles: The Rochester City Newspaper Index is a citation only index covering July 1993 to April 2002.  The print articles are available at the following libraries:

Rochester Public Library
Local History, Vol. 9, no. 7 (Nov. 1, 1979)  - through present

RIT Libraries
OVER PER AN2.C564 v.12- 38 1982-2009,