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American Studies & Ethnicity *

Finding Historical Newspapers

If you are looking to see if USC has access to a specific newspaper, use the Journals Quick Search box.  If we have online access to this publication you'll see one or more results, with the dates covered and the name of the database(s) which provides full text access to the newspaper. If we have the newspaper in print or on microfilm you will see a link that says, "USC Libraries Print Holdings."


Databases that index large collections of historical newspapers

Search one or more of these collections if you are interested in seeing how a topic or event was covered in multiple publications:

*19th Century Masterfile The largest resource for pre-1920 studies, with over 6 million citations online. Search relevant printed index to material from 1800-1899, including for newspapers and periodicals

*19th Century U.S. Newspapers Includes over 500 newspapers from the 19th century.

*Alt-PressWatch Includes access to over 200 grassroots, alternative and independent newspapers, magazines, and journals. Provides an alternative to corporate media. 

*Associated Press Collections Online Provides access to AP's archives and primary sources from 1931-2008, including: original wire copy, personal papers, AP style books, internal publications, and more. Hundreds of videos and images are also included.

*America's Historical Newspapers (Readex)  Contains over 1100 newspapers from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, published between 1690-1998.

*C19: The Nineteenth Century Index Draws on indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.4 million books and official publications, 64,891 archival collections and 15.6 million articles from over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers

California Newspaper Project  (free)  An indispensable finding aid, the California Newspaper Project is an 18-year effort to identify, describe and preserve California newspapers. Close to 9,000 California newspapers were inventoried in over 14,000 repositories throughout the state, 1.5 million pages of California newspapers were preserved and made available on microfilm, and 100,000 rolls of negative microfilm rolls are being processed for permanent storage at the UC Regional Library Storage Facilities

Chronicling America: America's Historic Newspapers  (free) This Library of Congress site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1836-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present

Gale NewsVault Allows you to cross search the libraries historical newspaper collections from Gale. (17th century - 20th century British and American newspapers)

*Newspaperarchive.com  Provides full-text access to over 6,000 American, British, Canadian and several other international newspapers with coverage between 1607-present. Over 200 of these newspapers are from California, including the Oakland Tribune, the Bakersfield Californian and the Berkeley Daily Gazette.

*Proquest Historical Newspapers  Indexes and provides full text access to 43 newspapers from America, Canada, England, China, Jerusalem and India.

*Readers Guide Retrospective 1890-1982  An index to articles published in more than 550 of popular and leading American magazines.

*Worldcat - Search this online catalog of library catalogs to see which libraries have a specific newspaper. You can see which California libraries have a certain publication and visit that library to obtain articles or request microfilm reels through Interlibrary Loan.


Reference books that index newspapers:

These reference books provide another avenue for learning about newspapers: