User:Sammi Brie/Clipping
Contributors to Wikipedia, especially those using The Wikipedia Library (TWL), sometimes use newspaper sources contained in such subscription databases as Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive, and GenealogyBank. These sites contain a function to clip sections of pages, such as articles, for later sharing. You should always clip pages when possible.
Clipping has these benefits:
- It creates pages that are viewable by non-subscribers to the relevant database.
- It makes it easier for editors to verify source content.
- Resulting clippings remain accessible even if an account is no longer current.
- It allows the Wayback Machine to usefully archive the clipping page, which ensures the content is still available if the newspaper is later no longer available.
Clipping requires an account with the site. For Newspapers.com and NewspaperArchive, both of which are available through TWL, see the guides at Wikipedia:Newspapers.com and Wikipedia:Newspaperarchive.com.
Note that British Newspaper Archive does not have a clipping function.
Best practices[edit]
- Use the article title as the clipping title. (Especially for tools like PressPass for Newspapers.com, this is time-saving.)
- Make a note of the page number. Page numbers may not match the printed page and, for non-digital microfilm sources, are almost never alphanumeric or reflective of sections.
- This may also be the case for newspaper mastheads, particularly where newspapers merged. For instance, some The Herald-Sun pages are actually for the Durham Morning Herald.
- On Newspapers.com, digital microfilm will always be section-page (e.g. D4), even if the newspaper itself uses the opposite (4D).
Newspapers.com[edit]
URL syntax[edit]
If you use the TWL proxy, the URL will begin not with www.newspapers.com but www-newspapers-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org. This is a proxy link that will not load for non-qualified editors. (If you are a contributor, using the Zotero connector allows you to right-click on a page with the former URL type and Reload in Proxy, which is highly useful.) Proxy URLs will be changed daily to non-proxy URLs in article space by a bot.
Proper Newspapers.com clippings, if older, have /clip in their URLs, but newer clippings have /article instead. The former redirect to the latter.
- Example of a newer clipping:
www.newspapers.com/article/the-pittsburgh-press/19620114/ - Example of an older clipping:
www.newspapers.com/clip/19620114/the_pittsburgh_press/
Other types of pages present issues and represent unclipped links needing clipping. These are /newspage and /image URLs. The latter especially require clipping, as they do not resolve to anything viewable by a non-subscriber. See Wikipedia:Newspapers.com for more information.
NewspaperArchive[edit]
URL syntax[edit]
If you use the TWL proxy, the URL will begin not with newspaperarchive.com but access-newspaperarchive-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org. Again, this proxy link is not universally viewable. You can also log in from outside the proxy and view your clippings at https://newspaperarchive.com/allmyclippings/, which is particularly useful. NewspaperArchive alone has the sometimes useful feature of creating L-shaped clippings.
A clipping will have "clipping" in its URL. Clippings can be categorized into various types on creation.
newspaperarchive.com/other-articles-clipping-dec-23-1994-4413444/newspaperarchive.com/sports-clipping-apr-14-1999-1717120/
An unclipped page will have a URL like:
and requires clipping, as they do not resolve to anything viewable by a non-subscriber. For more information, see Wikipedia:Newspaperarchive.com.
GenealogyBank[edit]
GenealogyBank is a newspaper database owned by NewsBank containing exclusively U.S. newspapers. While not available through TWL, there are clippings that use it on the encyclopedia, and this information is also of utility to GenealogyBank subscribers. It is also worth noting that GenealogyBank contains many of the principal U.S. regional papers that Newspapers.com does not, particularly after NewsBank brought all of its previously isolated databases to the site in March 2024, comprising some 2.7 million issues.
GenealogyBank requires checking off a box each time to make clippings public. There are fewer than 200,000 public clippings in all of GenealogyBank as of May 2024. The creator of this page has about 1% of them.
URL syntax[edit]
Proper GenealogyBank clippings have URLs of the type
A URL of the type below, which links to a clipping on a page,
can be converted to URLs of the above by removing everything between /doc/ and ?clipid= and replacing them with /newspaper-clippings// (note two slashes, which would otherwise be separated by the clipping title).