Ever wonder what happened on the day you were born? Interested in reading old newspapers? Need a primary source from an event in the past 150 years?
ProQuest Historical Newspapers lets you search fully digitized newspaper content from many national newspapers, most starting in the 19th century. Looking for the New York Times? Washington Post? Wall Street Journal? You’ll find these newspapers and others in this database.
1. Start with a simple search for an event or headline.
2. The database will return a list of newspaper articles matching your search term.
3. When you open an article, you can see a full scan of the original newspaper article, usually including images. The header tells you the name of the newspaper (The Atlanta Constitution) and the publication date (Apr. 17, 1912).
4. Take advantage of the tools at the top of the screen when viewing a newspaper article. You can save the article to your research folder, email it to yourself, see a suggested citation for the article, or export the citation to RefWorks.
5. The database sorts your search results by “Relevance.” The more times your search term appears in an article, the higher that article is ranked. You can also rank your results chronologically. The database also provides a bar chart, showing the years in which the newspaper articles were published. You can narrow the date range by dragging the arrows.
6. You can also explore specific newspapers. Just click the “Publications” menu at the top of the screen to see the list of available newspapers. Within the individual newspaper, you can browse by year or do a search.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers has many additional features to help you access more than a century of United States newspaper content. Happy researching!
Access: ProQuest Historical Newspapers is available on- or off-campus to UA faculty, staff and current students, using your myBama login. For any questions about accessing or using this resource, please ask a librarian.
