Research Guides: Primary Sources for History: Historical Newspapers

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Current newspapers

News and Newspapers Guide
Click here for information on accessing CURRENT newspapers.

Center for Research Libraries

CRL
This consortium of North American universities, colleges, and research libraries is especially good for microfilm collections of newspapers (domestic and international) and foreign dissertations.

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The consortium acquires and preserves traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions (including UCI) through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery.
CRL: International Coalition on Newspapers
Links to past, present, and prospective digitization projects of historic newspapers, listed alphabetically by country.

Historic United States newspapers

* = UC Irvine access only

Atlanta Daily World
Coverage: 1931-2003. This is an African American newspaper.
Baltimore Afro-American
Coverage: 1893-1998. This is an African American newspaper.
Chicago Tribune Historical
Coverage: 1849-1986
Google News Archive Search
There are hundreds of newspapers in the Google News Archive and the years covered vary in the extreme.

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Go here for a list of titles and dates: http://news.google.com/newspapers. Google stopped digitizing newspapers large scale, but digitized news content is still retrievable, although with less functionality.

About half of the titles begin their holdings in the 1900s, with many of the earlier titles dating back to the 1840s or later. Some of the earliest significant US titles include the American & Commercial Daily Advertiser (1800-1880), The Providence Gazette (1778-1828), and the Adams Sentinel (1800-1883).

The content is overwhelmingly North American but here are a few of the long-run titles from other countries below:

El Correo Español (Mexico) (1889-1914)
El Diario del Hogar (Mexico) (1881-1914)
La Nacion (San Jose, Costa Rica) (1945-1991)
New Straits Times (Malaysia) (1972-2006)
El Tiempo (Bogota, Columbia) (1911-2007)
Sydney Morning Herald (1830-1989)
Glasgow Herald (1806-1990)

Additional tips for searching: http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-note-about-searching-google-scanned.html
Japanese American relocation camp newspapers
Coverage: 1942 - 1945. This collection, consisting of 25 individual titles, documents life in the internment camps.
New York Amsterdam News
Coverage: 1922-1993. This is an African American newspaper.
New York Times Historical
Coverage: 1851-2007
New York Times Current
Coverage: 1980 - current
New York Tribune Historical
Coverage: 1841-1922. Index (1875-1906) http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vols/loc.gdc.sr.12037148/default.html
Pittsburgh Courier
Coverage: 1911-1950. This is an African American newspaper. Current issues available in EthnicNewswatch.
Wall Street Journal Historical
Coverage: 1889-1993
Washington Post
Coverage: 1877-1994

Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
This collection includes newspaper publications of all kinds, from the political party newspapers at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the dailies that shaped the nation at the century's end. Major newspapers stand alongside those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women’s rights groups, labor groups, and the Confederacy.
Access World News
Access World News provides information and perspectives from numerous national and international news sources, offering diverse viewpoints on local, regional and world issues. Date coverage varies with individual newspaper.
History Commons
History Commons, formerly Accessible Archives, contains several collections of primary source material in American history. The archives include historical periodicals and books, eyewitness accounts of historical events, descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records. Collections cover the Civil War, suffrage, World War I, as well as regional and local newspapers.
American Periodicals
A selection of digitized images of periodicals and journals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine and America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal; regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's.
America's Historical Newspapers (via Readex)
A collection of newspapers (as digital facsimiles) chronicling the evolution of American culture and daily life from 1690 to the recent past. This database includes five unique collections, including African American Newspapers Series 1 and 2; Early American Newspapers Series 1, 2, and 13; Early American Newspapers California, and Hispanic American Newspapers.
Black Studies Center
Consists of scholarly journals, commissioned overview essays by top scholars in Black Studies, historic indexes, and one of the most influential black newspapers in the United States, The Chicago Defender newspaper, from 1910-1975. At the heart of Black Studies Center is Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, consisting of essays that provide an introduction to major topics in Black Studies.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
A freely accessible website hosted by the Library of Congress, this collection covers America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963. It also includes the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Ethnic NewsWatch
Contains newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press. It also provides historical coverage of Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals from 1959-1989.
Illustrated Civil War Newspapers and Magazines
Contains full-text articles from periodicals, including campaign newspapers, published from 1860 to 1865. The database also contains a sample selection of Union and Confederate letters from the larger database, American Civil War: Letters & Diaries. Document types include advertisement, article series, biographical sketch/obituary, cartoon, editorial, fiction, government announcement, humor / satirical commentary, illustration, map, news story/item, panoramic view, poetry, portrait, publisher's notice, and travel narrative.
Independent Voices
An open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
Newspapers.com World Collection
Provides online access to over 200 million scanned pages of 4,900+ historical newspapers, dating from the early 1700s into the early 2000s. Contains full runs and portions of runs of well-known, regional and state titles to small local newspapers in the United States and other countries, including Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Panama.

Historic California newspapers

* = UC Irvine access only

California Eagle
One of the oldest African American newspapers in the West. Coverage: January - June 1944
California's Historical Newspapers
Coverage: 1846-1922. Includes 28 California newspapers.
Los Angeles Sentinel
Coverage: 1934-2005 (missing 1940 - 1945). One of the oldest, largest African American newspapers in the West.
Los Angeles Times (Historical)
Coverage: 1881-1990
Los Angeles Times (Current)
Coverage: 1985 - present.
Orange County Register
Microfilm coverage: v1(1906) - current [located at Science Library Microfilm Newspaper collection]
Online: v.82(1987) - current Newsbank America's News

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Previously known as Santa Ana Daily Register, Santa Ana Register, and The Register
San Francisco Chronicle, 1869-1984
Provided by NewsBank. Coverage: 1869-1984
San Francisco Chronicle, 1869 - 1922
Provided by ProQuest. Coverage: 1869-1922.

California Digital Newspaper Collection
A digitized collection of selected California newspapers spanning the years from 1849 to 1911. The project is run by the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research at the UC Riverside.

Historic African newspapers

* = UC Irvine access only

World News Archive: African Newspapers
Coverage: 1800-1922
English and foreign language newspapers from 14 African countries.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports (via Readex)
FBIS Daily Reports issued by the U.S. Government. Translations of broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the world.

Historic Asian newspapers

* = UC Irvine access only

Chinese Newspapers Collection
Coverage: 1832 - 1953
NewspaperSG [Singapore]
Coverage: 1831-2009
North-China Daily News & Herald Newspapers and Hong Lists (1850~1951)
A fulltext database of seven historical English newspapers published in China between 1850 and 1951
People's Daily (Renmin Ribao)
Coverage 1946- .
Official newspaper of the central government of the People's Republic of China.
Pravda Digital Archive 1912-2009 *
Coverage: 1912 - 2009. In Cyrillic.
Times of India
Coverage: 1838 - 2005

Access World News
Access World News provides information and perspectives from numerous national and international news sources, offering diverse viewpoints on local, regional and world issues. Date coverage varies with individual newspaper.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports (via Readex)
FBIS Daily Reports issued by the U.S. Government. Translations of broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the world.
Asahi shinbun 聞蔵IIビジュアル : 朝日新聞記事データべース (1879 -)
A newspaper database for Asahi shinbun published from 1879 to present. Also includes articles from the weekly magazines AERA (May 1988-present), 週刊朝日 (April 2000-present; news section only), 知恵蔵 (the latest issue only), 人物, and 歴史写真 (1930-1945).
People's Daily 人民日报 (1946-)
Chinese edition of The People's Daily, from issue 1 (1946) to the present. Full-text searchable and browsable.
Shen Bao 申报 (1872-1949)
Provides full-text searching and browsing of the most influential and longest lasting commercial newspaper of pre-1949 China.
South Asian Newspapers (via Readex)
A collection of 19th and 20th century newspapers from South Asia, featuring titles from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Taiwan nichinichi shinpō 臺灣日日新報 (1898 - 1944)
A browsable newspaper archive published in Taiwan under Japanese rule (1898 - 1944).

Historic European newspapers

* = UC Irvine access only

East German Newspapers
Includes Neues Deutschland, Neue Zeit, and Berliner Zeitung. Coverage: 1945 - 1990.
The Guardian (Manchester, England)
Coverage: 1821-2003
Illustrated London News
This is the world's first illustrated weekly news magazine. Coverage: 1842 - 2003
(London) Times Digital Archive
Coverage: 1785-2008
The Observer (London, England)
Coverage: 1791-2003
Pravda Digital Archive 1912-2009
Coverage: 1912 - 2009. In Cyrillic.
TLS: Times Literary Historical Archive
Coverage: 1902-2005
Proquest International Newsstand
A collection of more than 600 of the world's newspapers. Coverage varies but mostly includes only the last 5 to 10 years of a newspaper.

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection
A collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century English news media available from the British Library. Includes pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the period. Access includes Part I and Part II of the collection.
Access World News
Access World News provides information and perspectives from numerous national and international news sources, offering diverse viewpoints on local, regional and world issues. Date coverage varies with individual newspaper.
Eighteenth Century Journals
A collection of rare journals printed between c.1685 and 1835. The journals provide perspective on all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics covered include colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, the French and American revolutions, reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe, political debates, and London coffee house gossip and discussion.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports (via Readex)
FBIS Daily Reports issued by the U.S. Government. Translations of broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the world.
Newspapers.com World Collection
Provides online access to over 200 million scanned pages of 4,900+ historical newspapers, dating from the early 1700s into the early 2000s. Contains full runs and portions of runs of well-known, regional and state titles to small local newspapers in the United States and other countries, including Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Panama.
19th Century British Library Newspapers
A database of newspapers selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth-century Britain. This collection includes national and regional newspapers, as well as newspapers from established country or university towns, industrial powerhouses of the manufacturing Midlands, and Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
Picture Post Historical Archive
The Picture Post Historical Archive comprises the complete archive of the Picture Post from its first issue in 1938 to its last in 1957 - all digitized from originals in full color.

Historic Latin American newspapers

* = UC Irvine access only

Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
dLOC is a cooperative of Partners within the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean that provides access to Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials held in archives, libraries, and private collections. Collections speak to the similarities and differences in histories, cultures, languages and governmental systems. Types of content include newspapers, archives of Caribbean leaders and governments, official documents, documentation and numeric data for ecosystems, scientific scholarship, historic and contemporary maps, oral and popular histories, travel accounts, literature and poetry, musical expressions, and artifacts.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports (via Readex)
FBIS Daily Reports issued by the U.S. Government. Translations of broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the world.
Latin American Newspapers (via Readex)
A collection of historical Latin American newspapers, including newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th century in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.

Historic Middle Eastern newspapers

Al-Ahram Digital Archive
Coverage: 1876-2019
Jerusalem Post
Access to the Jerusalem Post from1932 - 2008.
Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers
This collection of historical newspapers is predominantly in Arabic, but also includes key titles in English and French. It comprises mostly out-of-copyright, orphaned content, however the following titles are included as well: al-Akhbār (الاخبار, Lebanon, 2006-2019); al-Dustūr (الدستور, Jordan, 1967-2000); al-Jumhūrīyah (الجمهورية, Egypt, 1962-1986); al-Riyāḍ (الرياض, Saudi Arabia, 1972-1996); and Filasṭīn (فلسطين, Israel/Palestine, 1956-1967).