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Overview
The World News Connection (WNC) contains English-language transcriptions of news articles from selected non-U.S. sources, generated by the U.S. Open Source Center. WNC began distribution in 1995 as a successor product to the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports. The service was discontinued on December 31, 2013.
The WNC offered by East View Information Services offers access to 856,013 items dating from 1995 to 2013. The archive is full-image with fully searchable text.
Provider
Details
Subject Areas
Resource Types
Major Languages
CRL Review
Collection Content
The World News Connection (WNC) began distribution in 1995 as a successor product to the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports, which were discontinued in 1996. The Open Source Center (OSC), a CIA facility under the Director of National Intelligence, monitored, collected and translated news sources, a portion of which was provided to the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), which in turn licensed it for commercial distribution in the World News Connection database and other aggregated products.1 In 2013, NTIS notified distributors of WNC that the OSC would no longer supply the feed of new documents (after negotiation of a transition period) as of December 31, 2013.
Sources for WNC Content
WNC content consists of English-language transcriptions generated from government monitoring of selected non-U.S. broadcasts, web postings, newspapers, wire services, and other news sources from hundreds of countries for national security purposes. The OSC, which continues to provide the content for government use, updates the content hourly.
The articles are translated into English, although users have noted some cases where part of the content appears in the original language (such as an article from GMA News Online (Quezon City, Philippines) July 31, 2013). Generally the articles are presented as full text; a small number are noted as excerpted.
The types of sources range from print reporting to news agency bulletins to broadcast transcripts. (See Appendix of this review for Sources Included in WNC). Typically they did not include the standard, major newspapers such as Germany’s FAZ. A sample of listings indicates the broad range:
- From Colombia: Caracol Colombia Radio, Caracol Television, El Espectador, El Pais
- From Cyprus: CyBC Television 1, CyBC Radio 1, Cyprus Mail, Cyprus News Agency, Kibris Gazetesi, Volkan Gazetesi
The articles are not generally lengthy or analytical. However, as complete translations of diverse new sources, they can be useful for browsing current world perspectives. An article by specialist Kalev Leetaru suggests that vernacular sources, including broadcast media, can provide unique insight on local and world events.2
WNC Distributors
When the WNC was actively distributed, commercial distributors included East View Information Services, ProQuest, Westlaw, and others.
East View Information Services
East View released an updated platform in 2013 to integrate access to current and retrospective content provided by WNC. In addition, East View converted backfiles covering archival content from November 1, 1995 through 2005 to provide full coverage of WNC content through December 31, 2013. See below for more information.
ProQuest
After acquiring Dialog from Thomson Reuters in 2008, ProQuest initially offered WNC on two platforms: through the traditional Dialog interface (ProQuest Dialog) with holdings dating back to 1995, and through ProQuest's own interface with holdings back to 2005. As of fall 2013, WNC was no longer available through the traditional Dialog interface, but the retrospective holdings were not migrated to the new ProQuest platform. Also, a database search analysis conducted in September 2013 indicated a significant gap between the number of documents covered in the ProQuest Dialog and ProQuest databases for the period both purportedly held content, 2006-2012. See Appendix: WNC Record Count Comparison ProQuest Dialog and ProQuest. As of March 31, 2014, ProQuest discontinued access to all versions of WNC.
Delivery
In 2013 East View invested in a new platform with the aim of simplifying search access, releasing a very simple basic box search and then an advanced search in fall of 2013.
The basic search option, covering all fields including full text, presents some limitations. There is no note on use of Boolean operators; default search applies the “or” operator, resulting in broad and imprecise results. Also, basic search currently does not provide tools to narrow search results.
The advanced search interface, introduced in October 2013, is definitely easier to use than the previous alternative from Dialog (through ProQuest), but it is not totally intuitive, and could use some refining. The first three fields are presented as repeatable variables, options which could be more clearly labeled. The field labels themselves are ambiguous: “Entire Article” means full text; “Title” apparently means article title, and “Source Name” apparently means source title. Do titles need to be exact, or can they be just the opening phrases, or title key words?
The user does have the benefit of the original OSC subject headings, presented as a list of topics which can be searched in combination with other factors such as regions or countries. (e.g. Crime, Dissent, Domestic Economic, Domestic Political, Energy, Human Rights, etc.).
Searches can be limited by date of insertion or publication, and a range of dates can be applied (unlike in the browse interface). But it is not apparent how to narrow results by date after they are displayed. Also, unfortunately search results are not highlighted in context or as snippets. One must browse through an entire document. For example, the portion of an August 2013 North Korean news agency newsletter pertinent to the heading “Caribbean Americas—International Political—Cuba” is located four pages into a list of one-sentence bulletins. This is apparently a factor of the level of xml markup.
Broad browse categories are divided by region (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Near East & South Asia, Oceania). The browse view defaults to Africa. A calendar view offers selection of a particular date for retrospective browsing. Unfortunately, it has not been configured to allow browsing of a range of dates. Also, the user must note that the date appears to be the “insertion date,” not the original source date.
It seems that the variability of source metadata incorporated with the translated documents probably works in opposition to a simplified, unified approach to effective retrieval. Notably, East View reported ongoing “data cleanup” early in 2014 after loading a full run of back records. Country names need to be normalized: the drop-down list of country search terms included both “Korea, North” (yielding a few records) and “North Korea” (yielding the majority of records), along with an odd assortment of non-standard versions for the “West Bank”, including “West”, “West Bank &”, “West Bank & Gaza”, etc.
Also, because of the great variety of international sources included, and because WNC is indexed by individual article rather than serial issues, serial titles are currently not identified by ISSNs. Therefore they are not available for Open URL linking. East View has reported that adding ISSNs at a publication level, but not at the article level, may be possible with future iterations of the platform.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Source materials selected for the WNC database did not generally include lengthy analytical articles. But it had served as a useful window into primary source content from developing regions of the world, serving both current awareness and research on historical trends. Articles were selected for translation and inclusion with an eye to U.S. strategic interests. Note that some materials harvested and translated by the Open Source Center, although circulated by the OSC within the U.S. intelligence community, had not been provided for inclusion in the WNC database.
In comparing the WNC available through East View and ProQuest, CRL members noted late in 2013:
- While East View loaded back content in its new interface, as of September, 2013, ProQuest had not made a commitment to do so.
- The East View platform offered the initial advantage of being more user-friendly than the traditional Dialog platform which was being phased out. East View also developed an advanced search platform, with basic features which could use refinement (see above).
- The ProQuest platform was seen as user friendly, and had the advantage of offering flexible, specified access to indexed fields including abstracts and document types.
- The East View content, made available as an archive after the cessation of current content distribution from OSC, was priced considerably lower than that available previously on the original ProQuest Dialog platform.
Reviewers
Center for Research Libraries
- Virginia Kerr - Digital Program Manager
Contributors
Colgate University
- Mike Poulin - Head of Digital Initiatives and Resources Professor in the University Libraries
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
- Lynne M. Rudasill - Associate Professor, Global Studies Librarian
University of Michigan
- Jennifer Nason Davis - Anthropology Subject Specialist and Coordinator, Social Science Collections
- Catherine Morse - Government Information, Law and Political Science Librarian
University of Minnesota
- Gordon B. Anderson - Librarian for European Studies
University of Pennsylvania
- Lauris Olson - Social Sciences Bibliographer
Endnotes
1 For information on the NTIS distribution service, see http://wnc.ntis.gov/ See also Barry Newman, “Today’s News, Brought to You by Your Friends at the CIA,” Wall Street Journal February 28, 2011 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629004576136381178584352.html Accessed August 13, 2013.
2 Kalev Leetaru's in-depth study of the news sources included in the FBIS Daily Reports, and those in the Summary of World Broadcasts, published by the British Broadcasting Service (BBC) is available at: The Scope of FBIS and BBC Open Source Media Coverage, 1979–2008.
Appendix
Community Ratings
Content scope and completeness
Cost and price-structure
Platform and user interface