National and International Collections
Licensed Databases of Newspapers
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Proquest Historical NewspapersCornell restricted resource.
Full-text and full-image articles from sixteen major national newspapers including such titles as:
Baltimore Sun (1837-1990)
Boston Globe (1872-1984)
Chicago Defender (1909-1975)
Chicago Tribune (1849-1991)
Chinese Newspapers Collection (1832-1953)
Globe and Mail (1844-2012)
Hartford Courant (1764-1990)
Los Angeles Times (1881-1991)
New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
New York Times (1851-2011)
New York Tribune / Herald Tribune (1841-1962)
Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002)
Times of India (1838-2005)
Wall Street Journal (1889-1997)
Washington Post (1877-1998) -
America's Historical Newspapers, 1690-1876(formerly Early American Newspapers). Cornell restricted resource.
Web-based archive of Americana that features images and full-text content from many historical newspapers. -
Access Newspaper ArchiveCornell restricted resource.
A service provided by NewspaperARCHIVE.com, offers 2,868 titles from all states as well as some of the foreign editions of Stars and Stripes and some Canadian newspapers. Many of these titles only have a single year digitized; others exist in long runs. A subset of these papers is available for free through WorldVitalRecords.com, and some individual free titles are included in the Regions tab of this guide. -
HarpWeekCornell restricted resource.
Offers full-text access to Harper's Weekly, America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper. The Library has licensed access to the issues from 1857-1912. The Library also has a CD-ROM of the Civil War era issues. -
American Periodicals Series Online, 1741-1900,Cornell restricted resource.
While primarily devoted to periodicals, this resource also includes some newspapers, such as The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison's paper. Individual titles are listed in the Cornell catalog. -
Ancestry.comAncestry includes among its genealogical resources 63 newspapers and other periodicals including Stars and Stripes and the LeRoy Gazette newspaper in LeRoy, New York, from 1826-1993
Free collections of newspapers
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Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.Various time periods and places.
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Small Town Newspapers250 small town newspapers, many of which can be searched and browsed for free. Some are also available through Footnote.com, a membership database.
Useful Tips
Elephind is a search engine that searches across many newspapers from four different countries. If it indexes papers of interest to you, it could be a quick solution.
Many newspapers are now offering direct searches of their archives and paid access to their digital backfiles Here are some examples:
- Boston Globe, 1872-1979
- Dallas Morning News, 1885-1977
- Toronto Star, 1894-2004
- Los Angeles Times, 1881-1984
- Guardian and Observer (UK)
Many states offer online access to newspapers to residents of that state. Connecticut's iCONN service, for example, provides residents access to digitized backfiles of the Hartford Courant from 1744 to 1922.
While there are millions of pages of digitized newspapers, millions more exist only in print or on microfilm. Where are the Newspapers? provides guidance on locating copies of papers in the Cornell University Library.