For a current topic such as the state of medicare, searching a full text newspaper database like ProQuest National Newspapers can be very useful.

  1. Type medicare in the first search box and prescription drug in the second search box.

  2. Click on Search.

    3. You will notice that all of the articles you pulled up are full text, and they are sorted by "most recent first." Above the search results, you will also see a list of suggested topics. Click on one of these suggestions to redo your search using different terms.

  3. Click on the Refine Search link to alter your search. Here you will see multiple ways to refine your search. Of particular interest to this topic is the Date Range option

  4. In the Date Range field, select "After this date..." in the dropdown list and enter 01/01/2003
    5. .

    Now your search will only retrieve those articles written after 2003 when the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement & Modernization Act 2003 was created.

    How many results did you find?

    With the date restriction applied, you should get 4,000+ results which is considerably less than in the Google searches.

    Searching a subject specific library database can help target your searches to find relevant information quickly.

    To look for articles that deal with a specific aspect of medicare, you just need to add another term to your search in the third search box, and you even have the option of searching the "citation and document text."