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Subject guide

Digital & Digitised Newspaper articles (International)

Leiden’s University Library provides access to a large collection of digital (contemporary) and digitized (historical) newspapers. These newspapers can be found through the library’s catalogue and through the library’s databases. Furthermore, the Dutch National Library offers access to several international newspapers. This page offers an overview of the most important newspaper titles and databases.

British and Irish Newspapers

Proquest Historical Newspapers contains full-text of:

  • The Guardian (1959-2003); London (UK)
  • The Irish Times (1859-2010)
  • The Manchester Guardian (1821-1825; 1828-1959); Manchester (UK)
  • The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer (1825-1828); Manchester (UK)
  • The Observer (1791- 2003); London (UK)

Irish newspaper archives (1846-…)  is an online database of Irish newspapers ranging from the 1700s to the present.

British Newspapers 1600-1900 contains:

French Newspapers

Gallica holds the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale and contains a selection of digitized newspapers from the period 1823-1944, including:

  • Combat (1941-1948)
  • La Croix (1888-1944)
  • Le Figaro (1826-1942)
  • L’Humanité (1904-1944)
  • Le Temps (1861-1942)

German Newspapers

ZEFYS, run by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, provides access to 193 digitized German newspapers from the period 1739-1946, including:

  • Berliner Börsen-Zeitung (1857-1930)
  • Berliner Volkszeitung (1890-1930)
  • Die rote Fahne (1918-1933)

DiFMOE offers a collection of digitized German periodicals from Central and Eastern Europe.

Austrian Newspapers

ANNO is an initiative of the Östreichische Nationalbibliothek and contains an ever-growing collection of digitized newspapers, including:

  • Arbeiter-Zeitung (1889-1985)
  • Die Unzufriedene (1923-1934)
  • Das Vaterland (1923-1934)

Swiss Newspapers

e-newspaperarchives.ch provides access to 142 Swiss periodicals digitized by the Swiss National Library and its cantonal partners, covering the period 1692-2018.

 

Russian Newspapers

The Current Digest of the Russian Press (1949-...) is a weekly collection of Soviet cq Russion Press articles translated into English by the US American Joint Committee on Slavonic Studies.

ProQuest historical newspapers (1851-2016) provides access to:

  • New York Times (1851-2016)
  • Washington Post (1877-2003)

Access to current editions of the New York Times 

American Periodicals provides access to 1,889 US American periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including:

  • The African Repository (1850-1892)
  • The Defender (1890-1920)
  • The Ladies' Home Journal (1889-1907)

Chronicling America holds 3,263 digitized historical newspapers published in the US between 1836 and 1922.

English language newspapers on/from Asia

English language newspapers on/from Asia

Japan Chronicle (1902–1940)
Digitized version of the English-language Japan Chronicle Weekly.

Japan Times Archive (1897 and 2016)
Digitized version of the English-language Japan Times.

The Korea times (1956-2016)
Digitized version of the English-language Korea Times.

The Oriental Economist (1934-1985)
Digitized version of the English-language Oriental Economist.

Chinese Newspapers

Proquest Historical Newspapers - Chinese Newspapers Collection
Contains the full text of various Chinese newspapers.

Japanese Newspapers

Asahi Shinbun
Digitized version of one of Japan’s main newspapers.

Yomiuri Online
Online edition of the Daily Yomiuri

Korean Newspapers

See also the Subject Guide Korean Studies: Newspapers, TV & Media

Naver nyuseu raibeureori (Korean Newspapers)
Digital archive for articles from four major Korean newspapers between 1920 and 1999

Newsstand
Contains archives of 30 Korean newspapers and magazines

South East Asian Newspapers

World Newspaper Archive - South Asian Newspapers from the 19th and early 20th Centuries
This database offers access to a select group of South Asian newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

For an extensive overview of digital and digitised Middle Easter newspapers, see the subject guide Middle Eastern Studies and Leiden University's Guide to Middle East News Databases.

Al-Ahram (1876-2014)
Digitized version of one of the longest-running newspapers in the Middle East.

Middle Eastern and North African newspapers
An open access collection containing a considerable number of Middle Eastern and North African newspapers in Arabic, English and French.

Factiva International Newspapers provides access to the latest business and industry news. The database allows users to browse through a collection of global content sources from 200 countries, in 26 languages – including newspapers, continuously updated newswires from Dow Jones and Reuters, journals and magazines, websites, blogs, and multimedia.

The starting year differs per title, varying from as early as the beginning of the nineties through 2004. Factiva is updated up to the publication of the previous day. Every day, Factiva selects a limited number of articles for each news source. It is not always clear how Factiva selects news sources and articles. For this reason, prudence is in order when using the database.

Searching in Factiva can be done in two ways:

  • Simple search. Use the search bar at Factiva’s homepage. After searching, you may refine your results by selecting organisations (‘companies’) and sources. Note that only English-language results are shown, even when searching for keywords in different languages.
  • Advanced search. Click Search and then Search Builder. This search method provides more possibilities, such as searching for specific news sources. It also allows you to find results in other languages than English. Note that English is set by default as the language of the results.

Pay attention to the following:

  • When searching for articles in foreign languages, make sure that the keywords you use are in the corresponding language.
  • You may use search operators in advanced search. For this, see the manual or click “Query Genius” in the upper-right corner.
  • Factiva shows results from 1969, but of most news sources only the last couple of years are covered. Do not expect Factiva to provide a representative overview of journalism worldwide since 1969.
  • Factiva also provides an extensive manual.

BBC Monitoring (1996-…) is a longstanding service of the British BBC, monitoring news sources across the world and publishing English-language reports about them. The digital archive goes back until 1996. On paper, the archive even goes back until 1939, but this archive is only available on request from BBC Monitoring. Originally, BBC Monitoring focused on radio and later television, but newspapers have been included since the mid-1990s.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (1974-1996) was a service of the American CIA, which used to monitor the news on radio and television in all countries of the world and to create daily summaries.

Many newspapers and magazines offer the opportunity to search their digital archives through their website. Sometimes even complete archives of various newspapers or magazines are available through the Internet, free of charge. A starting point for finding these periodicals can be the List of online newspaper archives (Wikipedia) and the List of online magazines (Wikipedia). This will link you to among other:

Hathi Thrust Digital Library, a not-for-profit collaboration of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items, which provides access to magazines such as:

Google Books provides access to a number of digitized historical newspapers and magazines, including:

Recent issues of the following newspapers/magazines can be consulted in the UB-Lounge in the Huygens Information Centre: 

  • Die Zeit
  • El País
  • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
  • New Statesman
  • The Guardian Weekly
  • The New Yorker
  • The Spectator
  • The Sunday Times
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