Library Out Loud

If you’ve used Factiva this week, you’ll have noticed that their interface has changed. If you’re not a Factiva user, this interface change could make this database more interesting! In my opinion, it’s much more user friendly and a good place to find New Zealand and international news from a wide range of sources. Factiva is also excellent for company and industry information.

First thing to say to current Factiva users is that you can still switch to using Factiva’s old interface (renamed ‘Classic’, naturally), and apparently there are no plans to retire it. Just click on Switch Factiva.

Below is a view of the new interface with a basic search and its results. It’s very clean. Options to re-sort, put on a date limit, and filter are easy to see – and use. Searching is easier as well because Factiva has moved to natural language searching. But if you do use fancy things like double quotation marks for phrase searching, or Boolean operators it will switch seamlessly to Advanced Search mode.

Another thing to like is that articles now have permalinks, allowing them to be given as readings to students. Just copy the link in the address bar. Here’s an example: https://dj-factiva-com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/article?id=drn:archive.newsarticle.DOMPOS0020240620ek6l00006.

However other than sharing the link, articles can’t be downloaded, although apparently single article download is coming sometime this year. Hop back to Factiva Classic, repeat your search (I know, sorry) to print or select multiple articles. If you are inspired to check out the new Factiva, one thing that hasn’t changed is the 5 simultaneous Massey users. If you get a busy message, try again later.

Katherine Chisholm, Business Librarian