Discovery services for periodicals: what discovery services and how to evaluate them?

Abstract

The number of newspaper and magazine articles now available online draws attention on how difficult is to find and retrieve this kind of information on the Internet. The consultation of newspaper and magazine archives requires the use of specialized tools unknown not only to the general public, but – sometimes – to information professionals as well. For this reason, a research was started with the aim of classifying and analyzing the existing discovery services for periodicals. First, the existing discovery services in the field – historical periodicals archives, newspaper archives, press databases – were classified and analyzed, then a set of indicators was designed in order to evaluate them. Finally, this set of indicators was tested on real archives – e.g. the most popular Spanish and Catalan newspapers etc. The decision to take into consideration different time lapses allowed a further investigation of the archives’ evolution over the course of years.