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Newspapers are a valuable type of material for research and are used as both primary and secondary sources. The Brown University Library has numerous newspapers across a variety of time periods, from diverse perspectives, and in different formats. This guide will assist you in searching for and accessing digital content.
Newspaper articles can help provide a firsthand account of a particular event or show what issues were on the minds of newspaper readers from a particular time or place. Articles from a variety of sources provide multiple points of view on an issue or event.
Newspaper databases offer collections of newspapers from particular eras, countries, or ethnic groups. Most databases offer full-text searching, which can be used to pinpoint individual articles. Some databases allow you to see the newspaper as it appeared when it was published, which can be helpful as it allows you to see headlines, page layouts, and advertisements from particular days.
For tips on constructing a search, see the Guide to Searching
To search for a particular newspaper title, start with BruKnow, the Library catalog. Enter the newspaper title into the main search box. If the Library has digital access to the newspaper, the title will appear either as a “best bet” at the top of the search results, or as one of the first few results in the list.
We often have access to digital newspapers on multiple platforms. When you view the record for a newspaper, take note of the dates of coverage for a particular access point. Here is what this looks like for The New York Times as of August 2021.
The Library subscribes to a number of historical newspaper databases; a more detailed list can be found on the full Guide to Newspapers:
Let’s try a search: We will compare newspaper accounts about Jackie Robinson that appeared in the mainstream and the African American press.
In the main search box for Proquest Historical Newspapers, type “Jackie Robinson” (using quotation marks will search the name as a phrase) and Baseball:
Let’s narrow our search down by using the limiters on the left side of the page. One of our options is publication date, on the left side of the screen:
Click on "Enter a date range" and choose 1947-01-01 to 1948-12-31. Then click on the Update button:
Our set of results is now greatly reduced. In this list we can see several African American newspapers, such as the Atlanta Daily World and the Los Angeles Sentinel. Further down the list, there are also links to mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times:
To read an article, click on the Full text – PDF. You may then download, save, or print your article:
A newspaper citation should include the following information:
Each of the databases listed above will help with citations. See the Library’s Citation Tutorial for additional assistance.
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