Lafayette College Library

Primary sources: Newspapers

Publications generally containing reports on current events, editorials, features, photographs, and advertisements. Often give prominence to stories that have taken place in and around their place of publication. Usually published on a daily or weekly basis.

Suggested resources

This selective list includes some general bibliographies, gateways, and indexes along with some of the more extensive primary source collections available at Lafayette College. For more subject-specific resources or individual titles, consult the library's annotated list of research tools by subject, and follow suggestions for library catalog searches below.

Accessible Archives: African American Newspapers     Full Text 
Full text of African American newspapers covering 1827 to 1855.
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998     Full Text 
Collection of digitized African American newspapers from more than 35 states.
Burney Collection of Newspapers     Full Text 
Digital collection of early English news media from the 17th and 18th centuries. Includes pamphlets, broadsides, periodicals, and an extensive collection of London newspapers.
Early American Newspapers     Full Text 
Coverage: 1690-1876 (focus on 1700-1799)
Searchable, cover-to-cover reproductions of hundreds of U.S. historic newspapers.
Editorials on File     Collection 
Location: Skillman Ref D839 .E3 (1981-2009) ; microfiche (1970-1980)
Coverage: 1970-2009
Compilation of editorial opinion from more than 150 daily North American newspapers. Includes brief factual summaries related to editorial topics.
Facts on Film     Collection 
Location: Microforms
Coverage: 1954-1973
Collection includes newspaper articles, editorials, political cartoons, and letters to the editor related to public school segregation in the American South, race relations, and civil rights.
FBIS Daily Reports     Collection 
Location: Microforms
Coverage: 1983-1995
Full text and summaries of foreign newspaper articles, television and radio broadcasts, periodicals, and non-classified technical reports collected and translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Indexes to the fiche collection are shelved in the reference collection.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980     Full Text 
Digitized collection of Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. Includes many titles published biligually in Spanish and English.
Historical Guides to the World's Periodicals and Newspapers     Bibliography 
Location: Skillman Library (connect to catalog)
Book series providing historical profiles of periodicals and newspapers with accompanying bibliographical data.
Latin American Newspapers, 1805-1922     Full Text 
Collection of digitized Latin American newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Features titles from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and elsewhere. Most of the content is in Spanish, with some in Portuguese or English.
LexisNexis Academic     Index    Full-Text 
Coverage: mid-1970s to present
Provides full text or brief abstracts of articles from newspapers published in the United States and abroad.
London Times Digital Archive     Full Text 
Coverage: 1785-1985
Electronic edition of The Times of London.
New York Times Index     Index 
Location: Skillman Ref AI21 .N45x
Coverage: 1851-present
Index to the New York Times. Particularly useful for determining the amount of coverage given to a particular topic by the newspaper during a calendar year.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers  Full-Text 
Cover-to-cover, full image backfiles of the New York Times (1851-2009), Chicago Tribune (1849-1989), and Washington Post (1877-1996).
World News Connection     Full Text 
Coverage: 1994-present
Full text translations of news items from foreign media.

Library catalog searches 

Use the table below to develop search strings for locating primary source bibliographies and collections in library catalogs.

Searching for . . . Enter this phrase + modifier(s)
[see examples]
bibliographies newspapers and bibliography and [ethnic group]
[nationality]
[topic]
indexes newspapers and indexes and [ethnic group]
[gender]
[nationality]
[topic]
newspapers by city newspapers and [city]    

Sample searches:

  • newspapers and bibliography
  • newspapers and chicago

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