Historical newspapers, often referred to as “the first draft of history”,
are among the richest primary sources available for research into virtually aspect of the life of a nation, whether in the cultural, social, and political or economic sphere. They offer not only information about events in the past, but give us a window into how these were reported and packaged as news. Up till recently, to access these materials, a researcher had to be determined enough to make his way through either aged, often fragile, originals, or reels of microfilm, often difficult to locate and without the benefit of any index. This has now changed fundamentally with the advent of digitization, which has made newspapers both readily available and searchable. The digitization of American newspapers has been undertaken over the last 15 or 20 so years both by commercial companies, where access is charged for, and by various bodies and institutions making their material freely available. Within the first category, there are now a number of companies offering access to a vast range of titles, with sophisticated searching and viewing tools, but these come at a price: resources like ProQuest Historical Newspapers; Gale 19th Century US Newspapers; America’s Historical Newspapers from Readex (a division of Newsbank) are normally only available via a select number of institutions such as academic libraries that are able to afford the subscriptions. The alternative option of taking out a personal subscription to the back files of titles such as New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times is unlikely to appeal to any but the best-heeled researcher
