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News & Newspaper Research

Getting Started

This guide describes where to find News Sources such as newspapers, press releases, blog postings, and so on.

It also includes links to several of the most useful databases of scholarly articles, books, and other secondary sources.

This guide describes:

Newspapers

  • NewspaperSource (EBSCO), 1969-present. Subscription database, free to Pacific 
    Searches several hundred newspapers from 1969 to the present. Coverage in some years is spotty. Most newspapers are from the U.S., with some international coverage.
     
  • Chronicling America, late 1700s-1923
    This database provided by the Library of Congress for free covers a huge number of newspapers from across the United States from 1789 to 1923, with a few newspapers stretching up through 1949.
     
  • Historic Oregon Newspapers, 1850s-1923
    This outstanding free resource allows you to search through scanned versions of hundreds of Oregon newspapers from the 1850s-1923.
     
  • The pre-1923 Oregonian. Subscription database, free to Pacific 
    Pacific pays for access to this historical archive of the Oregonian. 
    The Historical Oregonian, 1861-1987. Subscription database, free to Multnomah County Library card holders
    This is a database that requires libraries to pay an expensive subscription price. Pacific does not subscribe, BUT you can get a free Multnomah County library card number, and then sign in to access it through their site online. 
    Oregonlive.com. Recent Oregonian articles; some older articles from 1987-present
    This version of the Oregonian provides limited free access to recent news, but older articles sometimes "expire" and cannot be viewed. 
     
  • Google News Search: roughly late 2000s-present
    Covers recent news that appear in online news sources. Links back to the original online source. The plus side is that you see original formatting and images; the downside is that as news articles "expire" off of current news sites, they disappear from the searches. Articles older than 1-2 years have very spotty coverage. 
     
  • New York Times Historical, 1851-2013. Subscription database, free to Pacific 
    The Historical NYT database allows you to see articles as they originally appeared. 
     
  • America's Historical Newspapers, 1780s-1810s, 1860s  Subscription database, free to Pacific 
    This is an excellent database which Pacific pays to access. We have paid for certain decades and regional coverage. Currently, our selection of material is especially good for the post-Revolutionary War period (1780s-early 1800s), the Civil War, and the pre-1923 Oregonian.
     
  • [NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE] Nexis Uni (formerly Lexis-Nexis Academic ): 1980s-present. Subscription database; we do not currently subscribe, but may do so again in the future.
    The most complete database for newspaper, magazine and other popular press articles from the 1980s to the present. Contains more than 15,000 news, legal and business sources including: print and online journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs; and local, regional, national and international newspapers. Unfortunately, original formatting and images are stripped out. 
    • Use keywords plus date limits
    • After you get results, check out the ways to limit your search on the left hand side. You can for example:
      Limit by Publication Type = Newspapers only, or Press Releases, or Blogs ... etc. 
      Limit by Location = Limit just to publications within a particular country, state, etc. 
    • It if often useful to Sort by Date Oldest to Newest, to see the news in the order that it originally appeared

 

EVEN MORE NEWS SOURCES are linked to on this library page.