As any media theorist will tell you, all forms of media and technologies have embedded messages and values. The Internet embodies many of these, but perhaps the most important is its emphasis on speed. Today we all search and want the very latest information—not only because it may be the most useful--but also because we can. For some kinds of news related research in fact, anything older than a few hours ago is seen as well, old indeed!

And while the emphasis on the “now” is not typically as critical for the business research purposes, even traditional research databases have tried to integrate a range of real-time or near real-time news, social, and other up to the second sources to give the searcher the opportunity to access what’s “happening new”.

And, sure, in many cases the value of a piece of information is directly related to its currency, say  a press release, an executive change, an announced merger, earnings report, product recall, or other actions where it’s important to access that just released information as quickly as possible.

But it’s also important to know where to turn when you need older business information—something published months, years, decades or even many decades ago. You might need to do this when you need to do historical economic research, find a comment from a CEO that reflects his or her company’s strategy at a particular point in time, read about a proposed merger or acquisition or an opening or closing of a business, or get an analysis of a new industry or any other countless research queries that require going back in time.

But this can be hard to do, since the availability of deep archives, both on the free Web and even on traditional professional online services, can be non-existent or hard to turn up.

So, in honor of the venerable and old, here are a few of my favorite places that business researchers can quickly and easily turn to that provide a deep searchable archive.

HighBeam a searchable database of magazine and journal articles has been around a long time, and promotes a database of over 80 million items culled from 6,500 publications, with an archive, depending on the particular journal, going back over 25 years. While there is a modest fee to search the service, you can sign up for a 7 day trial at no charge.

The Wall Street Transcript was launched in print in 1963 and today offers over 15 year archive of direct transcripts of one on one conversations between its reporters and CEOs of public U.S. Companies. There are over 21,000 interviews that can be searched by company or personal name, and while it is an expensive subscription based service, you can register to search the entire database and view excerpts of all interviews older than two years at no charge.

Fair Disclosure Wire offers transcripts of a wide range of conferences, quarterly earnings, and other public releases and significant events that publicly held companies are required to share with the public.  While there are some good free sites on the Web for finding these transcripts, when you want to go back several years, you will want to turn to a couple of the traditional fee based services, specifically LexisNexis and Factiva. (A full review and analysis of where to search and find company announcement transcripts was published in the January/February issue of The Information Advisor's Guide to Internet Research).


What about Google? Is it possible to do deep archive research on Google? Yes, to an extent. Because Google’s own algorithm prioritizes the newest and most recently updated sites, you will normally see the newest sites, articles, news etc. at the top of your results list. But you may not be aware that it is possible to restrict results just to a certain time frame in the past. You do this by clicking on the “search tools” link below the right side of the search bar after your run your search, and then click the “anytime” drop down arrow on the line below on the left to input your own custom time frame, (which can go back to the late 1990s when Google was launched). See the images below for a search on Netflix and its CEO Reed Hastings, mentioned along with the company Blockbuster, but restricted to the years 2003-2004. 

We normally don't think of Facebook as a source for doing research. After all, for most of us, it's more for keeping up with friends and family, posting and sharing the occasional fun or interesting article, picture or video, and for light browsing, clicking and viewing.

But Facebook recently began integrating a better search function that, under the right circumstances- could make it a potentially more useful source for conducting a certain type of substantive research.

Facebook itself has never been a powerhouse when it comes to integrating an effective search function. In fact, over the years, it has changed, removed features, and done some inexplicable things to its search function that have made it hard to get a handle on what it can do and how to do it. 

But I've noticed that recently the search function seems to have stabilized a bit, so that you can search an archive of the words and phrases of the feeds of people and entities you currently receive in your news feed. I'll demonstrate how you can do this a little further down this post.

But what would be the use of this for research purposes? Well, it depends. For me, I personally not only "friend" my family and friends, but also do so for publications, organizations, and authorities in my field whose opinions I respect and who I trust. Therefore, those entities often comment or share links on important topics, and I therefore value their contributions as trusted sources.

So, let's say that I am doing some research on the measles outbreaks and vaccinations. Of course, I will check all the standard print, professional online, and Web based news and information sources, but I may also want a more filtered take from my own trusted Facebook-based sources--what have the journals and people I know and trust been saying or what have they been sharing about this topic.

Here's how. It's quite easy and you can do the same.

The first step wasto enter my search words or phrases in Facebook's standard search box at the top of myhome page, as you can see I've done in the figure above. Facebook then returned all matching pages, events, and people, with images on the left side. But what you want to do to limit your search to an archive of your own personal feed is to click the words next to the little magnifying glass on the bottom of the list. (In this case, Facebook also suggested a plural for vaccine as well).

Once you do this, Facebook will then retrieve past posts from the people and other entities you get your newsfeed that used that term or terms--see this figure below as an example. There you'll see an excerpt of a PBS NewsHour report, a post from a  friend of mine who is a well known doctor and public epidemiologist, and below that are posts from other organizations, people, and news organizations I like to read.

Of course this works best if you are already friending the media sites, organizations and people whose views you respect and trust!  If you have not done this yet, it's never too late, and help transform Facebook from a fun distraction to a type of customized personal newswire.