American Studies: Research Seminar

Why Newspapers?

Newspapers allow you to keep up with current issues and events. You can also use historical newspapers to find out how issues and events were reported during a specific time in history.

Newspapers

Contemporary Accounts

Access World News: Access to the full text of over 600 U.S. and over 700 international newspapers. Rutgers-restricted Access

Westlaw Campus Research: "News" portion indexes the full text of many newspapers.Rutgers-restricted Access

Factiva: A vast archive which includes the full-text of 8,000 leading newspapers(including the New York Times), magazines, trade journals, newsletters, and television and radio transcripts. Ten to twenty year+ backfile for many titles. Rutgers-restricted Access.

Historical Accounts

American Periodicals Series Online 1740-1900: The full text of articles, advertisements, illustrations etc., from American popular and literary magazines and journals that began publication between 1741 and 1900. Search by author, title, article type, publication title, date, and keywords in the full-text. Rutgers-restricted Access

Proquest Historical Newspapers: Combined Search: Search across the six ProQuest historical newspapers that the Libraries subscribe to: the Chicago Defender (1910-1975), the New York Times (1851- three years prior to the current year), the Philadelphia Inquirer (November 7, 1860 – December 31, 2001), the Pittsburgh Gazette (August 29, 1786 – December 31, 2003), the Wall Street Journal (1889-2010), and the Washington Post (1877-2005).; Searching across the historical newspapers is handy, but sometimes articles that appear in a search of an individual newspaper don't appear in a combined search. Rutgers-restricted Access.

Historical New York Times: Allows you to search and display the full image of articles published in the New York Times back to 1851. The two+ most recent years are not included; use Factiva to find more recent articles. Rutgers-restricted Access.

Historical Washington Post: Search and display the full image of articles published in the Washington Post between 1877 and 2005. Rutgers-restricted Access.

Historical Philadelphia Inquirer: Search and display the full image of articles published in the Philadelphia Inquirer between 1860 and 2001. Rutgers-restricted Access.

Historical Wall Street Journal: Search and display the full image of articles published in the Wall Street Journal between 1889 and 2010. Rutgers-restricted Access

Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers: Full-text database of 500 newspapers published between 1800 and 1900. Rutgers-restricted Access.

Chicago Defender: The Chicago Defender was the most influential African-American newspaper of the 20th century. With the majority of its readership outside the Chicago region, it served as the de facto national black newspaper in the U.S. Search and display the full text of articles published between 1910 and 1975. Rutgers-restricted Access.