This page is designed to provide researchers with information that will help them to choose between a wide range of resources for identifying, locating, or accessing periodical and newspaper articles from the 17th, 18th, 19th, or early 20th centuries.

I. ONLINE FULL-TEXT RESOURCES

Various online resources provide access to full text and/or full-page image of selected periodicals and newspapers from the 17th, 18th, 19th, or early 20th  century.

For the most wide-ranging picture of how your topic was covered in the periodical press, you will want to make use of Indexes (see #II below) in conjunction with full-text resources.

Accessible Archives
A set of databases that can be searched individually or simultaneously. The focus is on periodicals and newspapers in the Eighteenth Century (Pennsylvania Gazette) and the Nineteenth Century (African-American Newspapers, Godey's Lady's Book, and Civil-War newspapers). Also includes specialized databases of genealogical and industrialization information.

American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries 
A full-text resource containing full-color scans of original print documents archived at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). The collection spans the nineteenth century through the dawn of the twentieth century, containing labor, trade, literary, scientific, and photographic periodicals, as well as other historically-significant titles. The resource provides enhanced access to full runs of hundreds of periodicals.
NOTE: To search simultaneously with American Periodical Series Online: Open "Select Multiple Databases" option from the main search screen, and scroll down to select American Periodical Series Online.

American Periodicals Series Online
Provides searchable full text and page images for more than 1,100 American magazines and journals that originated between 1741 and 1900.  Derived from the American Periodicals Series microform collection.
NOTE: To search simultaneously with American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries: Open "Select Multiple Databases" option from the main search screen, and scroll down to select American Periodical Series from the Center for Research Libraries.

America's Historical Newspapers
Full-text and full-page-image access to more than 1,000 U.S. historical newspapers published between 1690 and 1922, including titles from all 50 states.
Includes Early American newspapers, series 1-7, 1690-1922 and Hispanic American newspapers, 1808-1980. 

Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1543-1945
Full-text collection of books and periodicals relating to the history of women, women's rights, and women's suffrage. The bulk of materials fall within 1880-1920.

HarpWeek
Page images and searchable full text of Harper's Weekly, the popular illustrated American magazine, for the period 1856-1912. Detailed searchable subject index.

Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980
Includes hundreds of Spanish-language or Spanish/English bilingual newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Historical Black Newspapers 
Full-text and full-image access to the following African-American newspapers: Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003), Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988), Chicago Defender (1910-1975), Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993), and Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002).
NOTE: To include other historical databases in your search, or to remove one or more of the above newspapers from your search: Click on "Select Multiple Databases" in the main search screen, scroll down to "Historical Databases," and select or de-select items as desired.

JSTOR
Searchable full text, displayed as page images only, for more than 120 key scholarly journals from their earliest issue up to about five years ago.

Making of America
Searchable full text of thousands of pages of text from U.S. books and periodicals of the late 19th and early 20th-century.

The Nation
Searchable full text, displayed as page images only, for a leading American left-liberal journal, 1865-1999.

19th Century U.S. Newspapers
Searchable database containing digital facsimile images of newspapers, presented as full page layout as well as single articles. Advertisements and illustrations are included. This collection includes numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S.; and it encompasses the entire 19th century.

Periodicals Archive Online
Focus: American, British, and European
Archive of hundreds of digitised journals published in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and areas of general popular interest. Each periodical is covered back to its first issue, regardless of when it began publication. International in scope, Periodicals Archive Online covers periodicals in a number of Western languages.

Proquest Historical Newspapers
Full-text and full-image articles, dating back to their first issues, for the following newspapers: the New York Times (1851-2001), the Wall Street Journal (1889-1987), the Washington Post (1877-1988), the Atlanta Constitution (1868-1925), the Boston Globe (1872-1922), the Chicago Tribune (1890-1946), and the Los Angeles Times (1881-1984).
NOTE: To include other historical databases in your search, or to remove one or more of the above newspapers from your search: Click on "Select Multiple Databases" in the main search screen, scroll down to "Historical Databases," and select or de-select items as desired.

II. INDEXES

An index will enable you to identify articles published in periodicals and/or newspapers.

A. Online Indexes

Nineteenth-Century Masterfile
Integrates a number of indexes to nineteenth-century printed material into one database. Includes: Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1906), and other general periodical indexes; New York Daily Tribune Index (1875-1906), New York Times Index (1863-1905), and other indexes devoted to specific newspaper or periodical titles; as well as specialized indexes for law, religion, and government documents.

Historical Newspapers Online
Electronic form of the indexes to the London Times and the New York Times. Currently covers the London Times beginning 1790 and the New York Times beginning 1851.

PAIS Archive
Includes references to more than 700,000 journal articles, books, hearings, reports, gray literature, government publications, and other English-language materials from around the world, originally published in the PAIS Bulletin, 1915-1976. Subjects covered include: demography, economic conditions, energy resources, environmental studies, government, human rights, international affairs, media, political science, and public policy.

Readers Guide Retrospective
Coverage: 1890-1982. Provides citations to articles in popular and general-interest periodicals.

Writings on American History, 1902-1989/90.
Location: BUTLER STACKS
Call Number: Z1236 .L331
Lists books and articles on American history.

C. To Identify Additional Relevant Indexes

For a fuller listing and discussion of periodical and newspaper guides and/or indexes, see:

Balay, Robert. Early periodical indexes : bibliographies and indexes of literature published in periodicals before 1900. (Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2000)
Butler Reference R016.05 B18

Prucha, Francis Paul. Handbook for Research in American History, 2nd. ed (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1994), 50-61, 73-80.
Butler Reference Desk R016.973 P951

III. BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND HISTORIES

Bibliographies and histories can provide you with varying degrees of information about specific periodicals or newspapers and/or about the periodical press as a whole in a given time period. Some major examples of such works would be:

Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines, 5 vols. (New York, London, D. Appleton 1930-1968)
BUTLER STACKS PN4877 .M63 1930
BUTLER REFERENCE DESK R070.973 M851

Many specialized bibliographies, which list and describe certain types of periodical publications, are also available. Some examples are listed below. Note that the base call number they share--R016.051--identifies a good area of Butler Reference (Room 310, Alcove 5) to browse for similar resources.

Humphreys, Nancy K. American women's magazines : an annotated historical guide (New York: Garland, 1989)
BUTLER REFERENCE R016.051 H88

Lora, Ronald and William Henry Longton, eds. The conservative press in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century America (New York: Greenwood Press, 1999)
BUTLER REFERENCE R016.051 C76

IV. USING CLIO TO IDENTIFY ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Books and other information resources about periodicals and newspapers can be searched in CLIO under the appropriate subject headings.

Select "Subject" as "Search Type Option" in the Basic Searching screen of CLIO.

Enter one of the following searches:

Once you have done your subject search in CLIO:

• Look at the overall list of entries to see how the large subject of "american periodicals" is broken down. If you are interested in finding more of the types of resources listed in this handout, you should be attentive to headings such as:
  american periodicals--bibliography
  american periodicals--directories
  american periodicals-history
  american periodicals--indexes
  
  
• Click "More Info" next to the "American Periodicals" subject heading to see more specialized subject headings that you may search under, for example:
  african american periodicals
  children's periodicals american
  hispanic american periodicals
  women's periodicals american