Video Transcripts : How do I find historical newspapers?

This video tutorial will show you the basics of how to find and search historical newspapers using both library and web resources.

In this tutorial we'll review how to find library databases where you can search multiple newspapers at a time, how to find and search individual newspapers, as well as how to search websites like chronicling America.

This tutorial does not include text mining. If you're interested in text mining Please see our guide for more information.

Let's start with resources that search multiple newspapers at a time. This can be useful for topics or events that are not limited to a particular locality, for example, depictions of African settler colonialism, or coverage of the Olympics. Start at the library homepage at Library.Northeastern.edu and select databases from the library homepage. Then select news and newspapers from the all database types dropdown menu.

This collection of newspaper databases offers newspapers that are grouped by geography, by date, or affinity groups.

From the list choose a database that reflects the time period or general area of your research interest. Click the word more next to an entry to learn about what is included. If prompted Log in with your Northeastern or NU London username and password.

When you're searching in the newspaper databases, they will be searching on the full text for your search terms. When searching in the newspaper databases pay careful attention to the order in which the database returns your results. Unlike most search engines, historical newspapers often assume that you want the oldest item first. You can usually change this to the best or most relevant match or the newest. If you prefer, you can also use the date limiter on the left side of your search results to specify your time period. There may be tool tips like the question mark that guide you how to format the dates. Depending on the publisher of the newspaper file there may also be additional filters like language title or location. You can also create personal accounts in the my folder area to save articles on the site from session to session. Historic newspapers generally show a screen scan and indicate where in the newspaper article your search terms appear. Then you can zoom in on illustrations, charts and advertisements in the surrounding columns.

You may be more interested in searching a particular newspaper, especially if you're researching a local event or a topic where you want a specific local angle. In that case, go back to the library homepage, at library. northeastern.edu and this time select journals and e-journals in the search box at the top of the screen. You can search the name of the newspaper for the city or region that you're interested in to see if the library has it. Here we'll search for the Los Angeles Daily Times. The e-journal search not only shows all of our subscriptions, but when you click on the title it also displays the dates available. For some newspapers like The Boston Globe, There will be more than one website that covers the newspaper. You'll see here that there are many different links, depending on which dates you need. As you search, you'll find some links will provide text only, while others will provide page images, including charts, photographs and advertising. Usually the older the date, the more likely you are to see full page scans which include ads and illustrations. In this example, I'll choose the ProQuest one because I'm looking for articles from the 1970s.

Newspapers may seem like a straightforward source to use, but they can be complex. Please ask us if you need help finding and using newspapers for your research.