LibGuides: History: an introduction: Newspapers

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Newspapers are an invaluable source of evidence of what happened and/or to find out the prevailing public opinion on an issue.

With digitisation, many newspapers are available online, but the layout and design aspects of a daily paper are not captured. Neither are ephemeral aspects such as advertisements.

Recent newspapers

Factiva
- A business information resource that allows searching for news articles from major national and international newspapers, trade journals, and wires.
- Includes Straits Times, Business Times, Channel NewsAsia, TODAY, The Edge as well as Asian Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times and so on.
- It is updated daily.
LexisNexis Academic
- Provides full text of hundreds of news sources including newspapers, magazines, and newsletters.
- It is updated daily.

Historical newspapers : Singapore

Some newspapers useful for Singapore History and available in NUS Libraries

Pre-war Singapore newspapers
- Digitized newspapers: Cheng Nam Jit Poh (1913-1920), Chong Shing Yit Pao (1907-1910) , Jit Shin Pau (1899-1901), Lat Pau (1887-1932), Sin Kok Min Jit Pao (1919-1933) , Sing Po (1890-1898), The Sun-Poo (1909-1910), The Union Times (1908-1946), Thien Nam Shin Pao (1898-1905).
- More information available at NUS Libraries > Resources > Library Initiatives > Digitized Collections
Other Singapore newspapers:
- kept by Chinese Library
- in microform collection : Search LINC for our collection of newspapers in microform.
Press Clippings
- Articles on Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and ASEAN from The Straits Times and Business Times are arranged by broad subjects.
- It was started as early as 1957.
- Search “Press Clippings collection” into the catalogue – LINC
- More information on how to use the press clippings

Other Singapore historical newspapers available free online or in other libraries

NewspaperSG
- NewspapersSG is an online resource of current and historic Singapore and Malaya newspapers created by the National Library Board.
- You can search newspapers (including Straits Times), but can access selected full-text (e.g., Straits Times 1845-1989).
- For recent articles use Factiva (above).
NLB microfilm collection
- National Library Board collection of microfilms also contains newspapers.
Jawi Transliteration Project, 1930-41
- Jawi-script newspaper and magazine articles published between 1930-1941 in the Straits Settlements and the Malay Peninsula, transliterated into romanised Malay.
- Hosted by the Northern Illinois University Library.
Qalam, 1950-69
- Qalam is a Jawi-script newspaper that was published in Singapore and distributed in Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia, Borneo and the Southern part of Thailand. It provide researchers with invaluable information on the activities and thoughts of Muslims living in the Malay world in the 1950s and 1960s
- Hosted by Centre for Integrated Areas Studies, Kyoto University

Historical newspapers : Others

What are the other historical newspapers available in NUS Libraries?

Here is a list of some historical newspapers available online:

Eighteenth century journals : a portal to newspapers and periodicals, c1685-1815.
- Portal to newspapers and periodicals printed between c1685 and 1815.
Proquest Historical Newspapers includes:

Gale NewsVault includes:
- The Economist historical archive, 1843-2009
- The Financial Times historical archive, 1888-2009
- The Sunday times digital archive, 1822-2006
- The Times Digital Archive, 1785-1985
- TLS historical archive, 1902-2008
  - Essays and reviews from the Times Literary Supplement from the first edition (1902) onwards.
Artemis Primary Sources which includes:
- British Library Newspaper database that has many 19th century British Newspapers.

17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
This collection of early English newspapers contains 1 million newspaper pages. It covers newspaper titles from London, the British Isles, and colonies. The collection is full text searchable.
19th Century British Library Newspapers
19th Century British Library Newspapers offers 2 million newspaper pages from newspapers selected by experts in the field. Many full runs of newspapers are available and are full text searchable.
America's historical newspapers
This collection provides images and full-text content access to more than 650 historic newspapers listed in Clarence Brigham's authoritative bibliography, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, and in additional subsequent bibliographies. Chronicles the evolution of American culture and daily life from 1690 to the recent past.
ANNO - Austrian Newspapers Online
Anno from the Austrian National Library allows you to browse through digital facsimiles of around 500 Austrian newspapers and magazines from 16th Century to the 1940s. For the period 1704-1872, there is full-text searching available in their Beta system. Note: the newspapers are in German.
Australian Newspapers (The National Library of Australia)
Australian online resources: books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more. Includes historic Australian newspaper pages from 1803 -1954, digitised as part of the Australian Newspaper Digitisation Project
British Columbia Historical Newspapers 1865-1924
University of British Columbia project providing access to 24 historical newspapers from British Columbia dating from 1865 to 1924.
The British Newspaper Archives
British Library's (BL) project digitizing various local papers from across the United Kingdom as held in BL's collections.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
This digital repository from the Library of Congress allows you to search historic newspaper pages from the U.S from 1836-1922. It also provides a Newspaper Directory with information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
End of Empire in Asia Project
Aiming to balance the focus on European events in global public discussions and reminiscences of World War II, the project focuses on a brief, 100-day period at the end of the war across a broad sweep of eastern Asia - a time when the Indonesian and Vietnamese revolutions were born, the fragile wartime truce between Communists and Nationalists in China began to fray, and the first steps were made in Japan towards a new democratic order.

The website is part of a radical, multi-faceted project to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the war’s end and its immediate aftermath. This is done not just via the website but also in printed and electronic publications plus via social media. Nor does the project simply present existing scholarship. It also actively reaches beyond the academic world to encourage non-academics to come forward with primary source material unknown to historians and often limited to their own private circles.
French National Library Digital Newspapers for IndoChina
This free database contains newspapers from French Indochina. The coverage for the newspaper varies.
Gallica – La presse quotidienne
Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothéque nationale de France, hosts numerous newspaper titles from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Titles currently include Le Figaro (1830-1942), Le Temps (1861-1935), La Croix (1883-1944), L'Humanité (1904-1944), La Presse (1836-1858), and Le Journal des débats (1814-1912). (Newspapers in French)
Himalayan Times (1947-1963)
Published in Kalimpong, India, this newspaper represents a major historical source for research into the political and social developments in the Eastern Himalayas after World War II. The editorials, articles, and news reports provide an important local perspective on peoples' lives in the border region between India, Nepal, Tibet, China, and Bhutan, as well as their encounters with Europe and the West.
Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection
The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection is currently the world’s largest online archive of open-access, full‑image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers. All image content in this collection has enhancements added where possible, thus rendering the text maximally searchable. The holdings of each title are also browsable by date, with each title cross searchable with other titles on the platform. This collection today contains over eighty newspapers titles published in Hawaii and the Americas. Most publications present a mix of content in Japanese and English, with formats and the proportionality of Japanese/English often changing as a reflection of shifting business and social circumstances.
International Times Archive
Online archive of the International Times, the pioneer in the British underground press. The website made by the Underground Press Archive Group provides access to issues of the International Times published in the years: 1966-1980; 1982; 1986 and 1994.
The Journal de Genève 1826 - 1998
A digital edition of The Journal de Genève, the French-language daily paper, published in Geneva. Searches may be carried out by keyword, date or period, with the possibility to limit a search by period or content (articles, titles of articles, images, advertising). You can then view the page or the specific item you want. (French)
La Gazette de Lausanne
Provides access to word searchable facsimiles of La Gazette de Lausanne, the Swiss newspaper, and its predecessors, from 1798 to 1998. (French)
Lantern: Media History Digital Catalog
The Lantern platform offers digitized book and magazine content focusing specifically on the history of film, broadcast, and recorded sound.
Le Nouveau Quotidien
Provides access to word searchable facsimiles of the complete collection of Le Nouveau Quotidien, the Swiss daily paper, from 1991 to 1998. (French)
NewspaperCat
NewspaperCat offers online digitized historical newspaper content from newspapers published in the United States and the Caribbean. It currently covers over 1,500 full-text newspaper titles.
The Nineteenth Century Serials Edition (ncse)
The Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (ncse) is a free, online edition of six nineteenth-century periodicals and newspapers. ncse includes full runs of the first five titles, and a decade only of the Publishers' Circular. Titles are represented as completely as possible, including multiple editions, advertisements, wrappers, and supplements where these could be found. Titles are:
Monthly Repository (1806-1837) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Northern Star (1838-1852), Leader (1850-1860), English Woman's Journal (1858-1864), Tomahawk (1867-1870), and Publishers' Circular (1880-1890). All six journals are segmented to article level, and can be downloaded freely.
The North China Herald
The English-language North China Herald is the prime printed source in any language for the history of the foreign presence in China from around 1850 to 1940s. During this so-called ‘treaty century’ (1842-1943) the Western Powers established a strong presence in China through their protected enclaves in major cities. It was published weekly in Shanghai, at the heart of China’s encounter with the Euro-American world in a city at the forefront of developments in Chinese politics, culture, education and the economy. As the official journal for British consular notifications, and announcements of the Shanghai Municipal Council, it is the first -- and sometimes only -- point of reference for information and comment on a range of foreign and Chinese activities. Regularly it also features translations of Chinese official notifications and news.
Old Hong Kong Newspapers
The Old Hong Kong Newspapers Collection is a selective collection of major old Hong Kong Newspapers published from early Hong Kong to nowadays, aiming at preserving historical news reporting of Hong Kong for reference and research.
Opinion Archives
The Opinion Archives platform allows you to search historical and current newspaper content and links to the full text article. It covers a list of American newspaper titles.
Papers Past (The National Library of New Zealand)
Papers Past contains more than one million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals. The collection covers the years 1840 to 1915 and includes publications from all regions of New Zealand.
Royal Netherlands Library Digitised Newspapers
This free database contains numerous Dutch-language newspapers from the former Dutch East Indies / Indonesia from 1744 to 1958.
Sin Po
Sin Po was a Chinese-Malay (Peranakan) publication that was first published as a weekly newspaper by young Peranakan Chinese in Jakarta on 1 October 1910. Sin Po became a daily newspaper in 1912 to meet increasing demand and shortly became one of the largest Malay newspapers in the Dutch East Indies. The political objective of Sin Po was to promote Chinese nationalism and to take a strong stance against Dutch colonialism. Sin Po played a crucial role in the development of language and culture. It provided a space for writers to contribute their articles or stories, which exemplified the current debates of society at that time. Sin Po also contributed considerably to form what is today referred to as Bahasa Indonesia. Many Chinese (mostly Hokkien, a dialect in Chinese) words have become an integral part of the Indonesian language. Sin Po also includes advertisement typically on natural/alternative medicines, beverages, cosmetics, clothing, tobaccos, etc.
The Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly 1840 to date
Fully text searchable digital edition of The International Catholic News Weekly published in London. Covers the entire archive from 1840 to date
Welsh Newspapers Online
Welsh Newspapers Online Beta is a free online resource from the National Library of Wales which currently lets you search and access over 250,000 pages from 24 newspaper publications from years 1844 to 1910. It will grow to over 1 million pages as more publications are added during 2013.