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Overview
First published on November 1, 1949, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is one of the major daily newspapers in Germany. Its intended scope covers a comprehensive range of topics in Germany and internationally.
Aside from the current news website (http://www.faz.net), F.A.Z. offers three archival products that cover the entire previous history of the publication:
F.A.Z.-Bibliotheksportal contains more than 4 million text-searchable articles of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspapers (daily edition, Sunday edition) from 1993 to the present and other publications of F.A.Z..
F.A.Z. 49-92 contains more than 2.8 million text-searchable articles from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from the founding of the newspaper in 1949 until 1992.
Frankfurter Rundschau contains the digital articles of Frankfurter Rundschau since 1995.
Provider
Details
CRL Review
Collection Content
First published on November 1, 1949, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (F.A.Z.) is one of the major national daily newspapers in Germany. The paper publishes Monday to Saturday (the Sunday edition is called the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung [F.A.S.], but both are referred to here as F.A.Z.).
Published by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH, F.A.Z. covers a comprehensive range of topics in Germany and internationally. The publisher notes that “As one of the most important media of the young Federal Republic the F.A.Z., since its very beginnings, has always greatly valued a large network of correspondents.” The four daily sections and inserts of the paper include economic, political, cultural, and science topics.
http://www.faz.net (the online site for the publication) contains a wide range of articles, photos, videos, graphics, and supplemental material. The site also includes links to its E-Paper version, and has an Archive Search (https://fazarchiv.faz.net/) which permits searching of articles from 1993 to the present. Searching is free, but article viewing is restricted to subscribers or as pay-per-view.
F.A.Z. offers two archival products for libraries that cover the entire previous history of the publication:
- F.A.Z.-Bibliotheksportal - https://www.faz-biblionet.de (formerly "F.A.Z. BiblioNet" launched in 2004) is the library access portal to F.A.Z. online and contains ca. 2 million text-searchable articles of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspapers (daily and Sunday editions) from 1993 to the present, as well as online content from FAZ.NET from 1999 to the present, including exclusive FAZ-PLUS articles. The Bibliotheksportal also includes F.A.Z.-Woche ("FAZ weekly"), Frankfurter Allgemeine Quarterly and Metropol (F.A.Z.'s bi-monthly economic magazine) covering 2016 forward.
Articles are presented in HTML format. In addition, F.A.Z.-Bibliotheksportal offers full-page PDFs of the paper from 2001 to the present.1 HTML results may not contain all graphics, photos or supplemental information of the print version, but the full-page PDFs contain all graphics, photos and pictures.
- F.A.Z. 49-92 (launched in 2010) contains more than 2.8 million text-searchable articles from the historical archive of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from the founding of the newspaper in 1949 through 1992. This is intended to complete the digitization of the full run of the newspaper. The archive contains the articles in full text and also the articles and pages in PDF facsimile. F.A.Z. 49-92 also includes reports of the “Zeitung für Frankfurt” as well as the “Rhein-Main-Zeitung.”
According to the general terms and conditions of the digital archive, the following are not included in F.A.Z. 49-92: advertisements, business pages that include stock prices (Kursseiten), photos, cartoons, weather reports, events, and publishing supplements. Graphics, if available, are provided (according to this description, graphics are in the HTML version at the end of the page). The full-page PDF version contains all the graphics, photos, and images.2
- Frankfurter Rundschau Archives (launched in 2013) covers digital articles for this title from 1995 onward (2 millon articles).3
According to the publisher, all modules can be purchased alone or in combination.4
Overlap with other products:
Article feeds (text only) for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung content were previously included in the LexisNexis and Factiva databases beginning with 1981. However, content was temporarily withdrawn from LexisNexis in 2005, and again from both sources in 2009.
As of October 2017, F.A.Z. is listed in Factiva's title list as "translated abstracts" covering 1981-2013. A user assessment of Factiva shows content is accessible from March 13, 2013 through present day. LexisNexis reports fulltext coverage from 2006, though content is restricted from the Academic market.
Since 2017, ProQuest “Global Newsstream” offers FAZ full-text articles covering 2017 to present.
According to the publisher, licenses with content aggregators do not have long-term clauses and are periodically reviewed "by both parties" to assess performance.5
Delivery
Technical Platform and Interface
The F.A.Z.-Bibliotheksportal database is searchable in full text and contains additional index functions for people, companies, industries, countries, and topics. The publisher reports that the F.A.Z. 49-92 archive has the same data structure and indexing categories as F.A.Z.-Bibliotheksportal.
FAZ-Bibliotheksportal 4.0 was released in 2017, and features numerous interface enhancements from the last version released in 2012. In addition to full-text search (all text including titles, with option for Boolean operators to link several terms), advanced search allows for searches by topic or tagged criteria (subject, person, company, country, industry, etc.). Results can be sorted by date, relevance, or decade, and search results can also be filtered against tagged criteria provided.
The portal also offers an expert search ("expert mode") for advanced users seeking to use complex and diverse combinations of search criteria. F.A.Z. has also included provisions for text and data mining, subject to a separate license agreement, on a case-by-case basis.
Search possibilities in FAZ 49-92 may deviate from those in FAZ-Bibliotheksportal.
Update October 2019:
FAZ has reported that at this time they are not able to accept IPv6 addresses. They are working on this issue, and will communicate to CRL once this is resolved.
Terms
General Terms and Conditions are available via the F.A.Z.-Bibliotheksportal site. Some notable limitations in those terms include prohibition on off-campus access and a restriction on interlibrary loan. CRL is negotiating terms of access with the publisher to be more consistent with North American library expectations.
Rights to use F.A.Z. content beyond the general terms of F.A.Z.-Bibliotheksportal are documented on the rights section of the F.A.Z. site at: http://www.faz-rechte.de/startseite.htm. See also the extensive brochure (in German) "Dahinter steckt immer ein original - Lizenzen und Rechte."
One of the terms identified cited as objectionable in the current (2018) license is the indemnification clause (2.3). (See Comments.)
F.A.Z. modules are available as subscriptions via CRL.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Comments from trial access to the database, June–August 2011:
-- The OCR seems to be overall fairly good quality. While some page image facsimiles appear somewhat pixellated, they are generally readable and clear.
-- The overall product and its capabilities are impressive. It would be helpful to make date browse features more clear: this can be accomplished through selecting a date range in the advanced search interface.
-- Regarding the interface, it would be preferable to be able to page through an entire issue in facsimile format at a time. Users can browse the database by date and download one page at a time, opening the page PDF file in Adobe, but cannot flip through the pages as they can in PressDisplay or a similar product.
Pricing quoted to American libraries for the current and historical archive database have been quite high in the past, but recently appear to be more reasonable.
Reviewers
Center for Research Libraries
- Judy Alspach - Project Coordinator
- James Simon - Vice President, Collections & Services
Contributors
Brigham Young University
- Richard Hacken - European Studies Bibliographer
Harvard University
- Sebastian Hierl - Librarian for Western Europe
University of California, Berkeley
-
James H. Spohrer - Librarian for the Germanic Collections
Endnotes
1 More information available at: http://www.faz-rechte.de/faz-bibliotheksportal.htm.
2 https://www.faz-biblionet.de/fazPortal/popup/SUCH_HILFE
3 Though an independent publishing and editorial company, "Frankfurter Rundschau GmbH" is owned in part by F.A.Z. with a 35 percent stake as of 2013. See: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/zeitungen-die-frankfurter-…
4 Per conversation with Archives staff 2017/10/11.
5 Per conversation with Archives staff 2017/10/11. See content lists for LexisNexis Academic Source List and in Factiva Publications.
Community Ratings
Content scope and completeness
Cost and price-structure
Platform and user interface