UPDATED Feb 26, 2026
In our “Researching Online” series this week, we review commonly used online historic newspapers sites and their usage. Included in this grouping of historical documents are regional newspapers, military journals, ethnic groups’ journals, religious newsletters, political parties, rebellions, financial news, student newspapers, police gazettes and union communications, to name just a few!
If you encounter difficulties, I’m happy to talk through the conversations and offer advice. You can email me at shapingyourfamilytree@gmail.com.
What can be found in online historic newspapers?
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Free Newspaper Resources I have used (but this list is only a sampling of the volumes of content online):
- Chronicling America / Library of Congress – Directory of Newspapers and All Digitized Newspapers.
- Cyndi’s List – https://www.cyndislist.com/newspapers/.
- Google News Archive – https://news.google.com/newspapers
- Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_online_newspaper_archives
- The Ancestor Hunt – https://www.theancestorhunt.com/newspaper-research-links.html
- Internet Archive – https://archive.org/details/newspapers collection of digitized books, newspapers and other materials
- Early America Newspapers – https://www.varsitytutors.com/earlyamerica/pages-past
- State Historical Society of Missouri Newspapers https://shsmo.org/collections/newspapers/mdnp
- Georgia Historic Newspapers https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu
- Digital Public Library of America https://dp.la/search?q=Newspapers
- USS Houston Blue Bonnet Newsletters https://findingaids.lib.uh.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/373834
- Japanese Internment Camp newspapers (and other digital items) – https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Newspapers%20in%20camp/
With subscriptions or access approved:
- Ancestry’s Newspapers.com – https://www.newspapers.com/
- FindMyPast ($) British, Irish and Other Newspapers – https://search.findmypast.com/search/british-newspapers
- British Newspaper Archive – https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
- Irish Newspaper Archive – https://www.irishnewsarchive.com/
- National Library of Scotland Newspapers Collections https://www.nls.uk/collections/newspapers/
- National Library of Wales Welsh Newspapers https://newspapers.library.wales
- Australia’s Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au
- Bodleian Libraries (University of Oxford) – Newspapers https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/az.php?s=125229
- Harvard Library Foreign Newspaper Sources https://guides.library.harvard.edu/news/foreign
- 100 years of Aviation Week – https://archive.aviationweek.com
There are a multitude of online repositories which have newspaper collections. In the U. S., start with the Library of Congress to see what they have funded to be digitized, searching by state, then location. If looking for newspapers elsewhere, most countries have digitized newspapers; check with our team, if you can’t locate what you’re searching.