The Olympics & Factiva: Global sporting event meets global news database!

With both the Olympics and our newest database (Factiva) on my mind, it seemed a natural next step to check out what Factiva might have to offer if I was researching the Olympics...

a. Russian News

Wouldn't it be interesting to see how the Olympics is discussed within their host country?  Are there complaints about costs? Does nationalism override objectivity?  Do issues that are reported outside of the country get coverage internally?

• ** Browse in Factiva via Source > All Sources > and select the source category By Region, then choose Russia.
• ** This will get you 1117 current publications -- newspapers, magazines, blogs, and more -- from well-known national titles (Izvestia & Pravda) to local titles (Narodnaia Gazeta, Sochi).  Granted, most of them are in Russian (one of 26 languages covered by this database), but Factiva's built-in translation feature helps a bit with that issue.  (Don't forget to turn off the default search limiter of "English only" so that you can catch the Russian articles.)

b. News on the Olympics in general

Factiva includes a few features that allow you to pre-focus your searches, because doing a hope-for-the-best keyword search among 35,000 news publications is not a path to sanity...

• ** Browse via Subject > Sports & Recreation and select Olympics to catch "All stories from the summer and winter Olympic Games, and all stories involving the International Olympic Committee."  Then toss in a couple keywords like, ummm... canada and hockey and amazing...  :-)
• ** (Seriously, I did chose the Olympics category, then limited my results to just the stories published today, and searched very broadly for Canada.  The thousands of results I got were from publications such as Yonhap English News, Thai News Service, The Philippine Star, RIA Novosti, and (closer to home) the Vancouver Province.)

c. And furthermore...

Are you planning to research an Olympics topic in one of your classes this term?  The Games have angles that are relevant to disciplines as diverse as Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Communications, and Kinesiology.  Factiva is just the newest among a great many resources the SFU Library has to offer to help you with this topic.  Check out our guide to Finding Information on the Olympics & Paralympics for suggestions on databases, sites, and search terms.