About Financial Times Historical Archive

The Financial Times Historical Archive covers 1888 to 2007 and is available to all Westminster Libraries' members from anywhere with an internet connection, whether at home or in the library. It describes itself as: 

Even if you don't have anything specific you wish to search for, there are still many items of interest - whether you browse through particular dates (the newspaper is in facsimile format so you can see the pages as they would have looked originally) or click on the years of special interest, listed towards the bottom of the home page. Just think of the events that will be covered: lots of economic crises such as the Depression or the Wall Street Crash, two World Wars and the Cold War, revolutions and upheavals...

Searching

As well as browsing it is possible to search the archive in a few different ways. The first option is a keyword search from the main page. This will only look for what the FT has decided are the main words in an article. To search within all the text of an article change this to "entire document".

Advanced search

There is a link to this in the menu bar toward the top of the page and it offers a range of useful options. You can:

• choose to look in a particular section of specific types of article
• ask to look for words in the headlines, articles written by a particular person or at a variety of other variables
• look only within a particular period of time
• look for illustrations / pictures

Search tools

Putting particular words or symbols in your search will cause the database to look through the articles in specific ways:

• AND between words will search for articles containing both words anywhere in the document (not just next to one another).
• OR between words will search for one or other word in the articles.
• NOT before a word will exclude results containing that word
• W3 is similar to AND but it means you only want an article if the words are within (eg) three words of each other ie: are close together.
• * is a 'wildcard' and can replace any characters. For instance: ship* will find the words ship, ships, shipping etc.

Other options are available and more information can be found in the help section.

Sorting through results

You can also search within your results or limit your results to a particular section of the newspaper. One other important tool is the option to sort through by relevance instead of just the default: date (be aware that your computer may need you to allow it to run an "activeX control".)

Viewing, printing and saving

When you click on an result from your search you are then able to read the article on the screen. You are also able to print it by clicking the print icon. However, there does not appear to be an option to save it to your computer.