LibGuides: Primary Sources: News

Newspapers as Primary Sources

Newspapers are a primary source providing a first rough draft of events. Since most newspapers are local in scope, there is good coverage of local issues. Newspapers also provide a good feel for the time period.

Most older newspapers do not include indexing. Usually you will need to browse through issues of a newspaper to discover its content.

Strategies for Searching FullText Newspaper Databases

When searching any fulltext database such as the New York Times you may find the following strategies useful to narrow your search down to more relevant items.

When available use the Advanced Search option -- this gives you the flexibility of doing more complex searches
If you get too many results see if there is a way to search just the headline of an article
If available limit your search by publication type such as articles, editorials, advertisements
Limit your search by publication year
Be aware of changes in language and spelling over time. For example articles written in 1965 will use USSR or Soviet Union rather than Russia; Negro rather than African American; articles from 1800 might use Hayti rather than Haiti.

Digitized Historic Newspapers

Chronicling America:Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress
"Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1924 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present."

This page includes links to freely available digitized historic Newspapers.

Historic Arkansas Newspapers, Arkansas History Commission
"The Arkansas State Archives has a wide variety of types of records. From this page you can search for county records, military records, maps, newspapers, land records, church records, manuscript materials on microfilm, and the State Archives' vertical and printed ephemera files."

The materials have not been digitized but may be accessed physically in the Archives' Research Rooms.
International Coalition on Newspapers (ICON) - Newspaper Digitization Projects
"This page highlights and links to past, present, and prospective digitization projects of historic newspapers. The focus is primarily on digital conversion efforts, not full-text collections of current news sources."
Newspapers.com
Contents:
"4,700+ newspapers from the 1700s–2000s
Millions of additional pages added every month"
Google News Archive Search
Alphabetical list of all digitized newspapers accessible through Google News Archive.

Using the Google News Archive

Google News has a newspaper archive search which provides access to a number of past issues of newspapers. Unfortunately Google does not provide a list of these newspapers. The Google News Archive Search finds articles from proprietary newspapers (where you have to pay to see the article) and to free archives of newspapers. To search the Google News Archive use the following search example. You can limit your search by date, source (name of the newspaper, e.g., Arkansas Democrat-Gazette), and if you want just free material.