ProQuest and Gannett newspapers Headley, Stephen 22 Jul 2010 13:19 UTC

Ever since ProQuest took over the rights to Gannett newspapers from Newsbank last year, we have had a number of troubles with the ProQuest product that we had to separately purchase to give us online access to the Cincinnati Enquirer. These problems have been conveyed to ProQuest representatives, but the problems persist. Problems include articles with inaccurate or nonexistent page citations, articles not appearing in the newspaper on the date given by the database, articles not being found by the major subject terms or names even though the articles are in the database, and articles in the database that were not in the newspaper at all. Some problems have been explained as indexing problems, while others have been blamed on the data sent by the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Are there any other libraries that are facing the same problems with their newspapers and their ProQuest product? We had to pay a great deal more for this product which make these problems that much more frustrating to encounter.

Stephen Headley
Manager, Magazines & Newspapers Department
Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County
800 Vine St.
Cincinnati, OH 45202
Phone: (513) 665-3365
Fax: (513) 369-3123
Stephen.Headley@cincinnatilibrary.org