University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign LibGuides @ University of Illinois Library - History 495: Chicago: A Social History

1. Finding newspapers in the Library

The UIUC Library has an extensive collection of newspapers, both current and retrospective, in a variety of formats, including hard copy, microfilm, and digital reproductions. Not all of them are included in the online catalog, but if you are looking for a particular newspaper title, try searching it first in the online catalog. Look for more than one record for each newspaper, as our holdings may consist of a combination of hard copy and microfilm, for example, and there may be a separate catalog record for each format. Most of these will be located in the History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library, but in some cases, the material will be found in another part of the UIUC Library

Some newspapers that are not represented in the online catalog may be included in the Library's separate UIUC Newspaper Database. This database is searchable by place of publication and by keywords from the title, so you can search for all newspapers published in Cincinnati held in our library.

Many newspapers are embedded in larger collections of online resources, such as Ethnic NewsWatch (1990- ). They may also be embedded in microfilm collections, such as the Underground Press Collection (1963-1985). Fortunately, the individual newspaper titles included in the major microfilm collections are listed in the UIUC Newspaper Database.

The History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library owns several important collections of alternative and underground newspapers and journals on microfilm. The Underground Press Collection, for example, contains 550 titles published between 1963 and 1985. The individual titles of the newspapers are listed in the UIUC Newspaper Database, but the actual articles in the newspapers and journals are not indexed, so you must scan the newspapers for material relevant to your topic.

2. Newspapers Online

We have access to the full text of the New York Times online from 1857 to the present, the Los Angeles Times from 1881 to 1985, the Washington Post from 1877 to 1991, the Wall Street Journal from 1889 to 1985, and the Chicago Tribune from 1849 to the present, and the Chicago Defender from 1905-1975 (actual holdings begin with 1910). These are digital facsimiles of the originals and are keyword searchable. From the Online Research Resources page type the title of the newspaper in the search box, or start from the convenient Quick Link to historical newspapers on the HPNL web site.

For much more information, please visit our guides to Current Newspapers Online and Historical Newspapers Online.

3. Finding articles in newspapers

For newspapers that have not been digitized, article-level indexing is limited, particularly before the 1970s. The digital versions of the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Defender, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal are fully searchable, so you don't need a separate index to use them. There is an index for several African American newspapers covering 1977 through 2007 (Index to Black Newspapers, 016.0713 In2 and 016.0713 In21, located in the History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library). Note that the print version of the Alternative Press Index (located in the Undergraduate Library) goes back to 1969, whereas the online version starts with 1991. For more recent newspapers, online abstracting and indexing for some major and regional papers is available through Lexis-Nexis, Newsbank, and EBSCO Host

There is a print index of feature articles from the Daily Illini for the period 1961-1978, the Daily Illini Spectrum Index. This is a rudimentary subject index and a chronological listing. There are copies in the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library.