This guide gives you an overview of newspapers and news archives and what material they include.
If you're new to using newspapers as study resources and want to know how they can support your studies: check out the section on primary and secondary sources in our Library Research Skills Moodle module.
Newspaper archive collections
We subscribe to these major collections of newspaper archives. Each allows you to search across a large range of sources.
Gale Primary Sources: you can search content across 14 news collections and it has useful tools like:
- term frequency: see how often your search term occurs over time
- topic finder: see what other words and subjects are found most often in relation to your search term
Nexis: an excellent source for online full text UK newspapers, as well as other news sources world wide, You can filter by publication type, world region and language.
ProQuest: it's not obvious from the interface, but this includes the following historical newspaper archives:
- Guardian and Observer
- New York Times
- Chicago Tribune
- Los Angeles Times
UK Press Online: 3 million pages of 19th - 21st century newspapers:
- best online source for archives of local Kent newspapers
- includes a collection of UK news coverage during both World Wars
Historical Newspapers: provides a different way of searching The Times and The New York Times archives
Eighteenth Century Journals Portal: portal to newspapers and periodicals c1685-1835, covering all aspects of 18th-century social, political and literary life
19th Century U.S. Newspapers: full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S., covering topics like the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life
Useful free archives
- British Pathé news archive: over 85,000 clips of historical footage from around the globe spanning 1896-1976
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (Library of Congress): search hundreds of full text newspapers from 1860-1922; the site also has information about American newspapers from 1690 onwards
- News on Screen (from BUFVC): database of British newsreel and cinemagazine production from 1910 to 1983, with over 180,000 records and a large collection of digitised documents
Individual newspapers
Use Nexis to search the full text of current newspapers - it usually covers the last 2 or 3 decades.
You can also search for publications by title to check if we have online holdings.
Current papers with special access
Financial Times 1998-present (through ft.com) - includes FT special reports;
- the first time you use this you need to create an account using your Kent email address (but not your Kent IT Account password)
Times Higher Education (full access):
- the first time you use this, you need to Register (top right) using your Kent email address. Do not use your Kent IT Account password. After that, you need to Login with your new credentials each time you visit.
Archives
If you want to go back further in time, you have access to these key titles (among others):
- Daily Mail Historical Archive 1896-2016
- Financial Times Historical Archive 1888-2010
- The Guardian and The Observer, 1791-2003
- Independent Digital Archive 1986-2012
- London Review of Books 1979-present (complete archive)
- Los Angeles Times 1881-1994
- New York Times (1851 - 4 years ago)
- Sunday Times Digital Archive 1822-2016
- Times Digital Archive 1785-2019
- Times Literary
Supplement Historical Archive 1902-2014
Help
Find out all the ways you can get in touch: