Theresa Inman

The wide variety of newspapers available on the Internet can be an extremely valuable source of current events information and archived articles, if you can find them. Fortunately, there are plenty of web pages designed to help you locate those elusive newspapers. These pages range from simple, alphabetically-arranged lists of hot links, to pages with multiple frames, search features, and access to full-text articles. The following examples are just a sample of what is available:

The Library of Congress Newspapers and Current Periodical Reading Room:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/ncp/olititles.html

This Library of Congress page includes links to U.S. and Non-U.S. newspapers that provide searchable archives and databases. Organization is alphabetical by name of the paper with geographical information added, e.g., (Gary, Ind.) Post-Tribune. The unique feature of this page is the asterisk and dollar signs used to indicate whether searching the newspaper's index and archive is free or for a fee. This may save you the frustration of locating a newspaper only to discover that the cost involved is prohibitive.

The Internet Public Library/Online Newspapers
http://www.ipl.org/reading/news/

The strength of this page is the very clear, straightforward organization of U.S. and international newspapers. Titles are arranged by country, state, or province as well as in one alphabetical list. Unfortunately, this page is not as comprehensive as others. For example, the short list of links to Oregon newspapers includes the Linfield College student newspaper, but not the Medford Mail Tribune. The site does encourage visitors to e-mail the names and URLs of newspapers that should be added to the list.

American Journalism Review's AJR News Link
http://www.newslink.org

With links to magazines, radio, and television sources as well as many newspapers, this is a virtual clearinghouse of news information. The newspaper section is organized by country and state with the added benefit of dividing American newspapers into those that provide full or partial service. Partial service newspapers are those that provide only limited contents, are irregularly updated, promotional in nature, or inactive. Even if you do not know in which state a particular newspaper is published, an added search feature makes locating the newspaper by title possible.

Newslibrary
http://newslibrary.infi.net

This site consists solely of newspapers published by Knight-Ridder and includes an archive of "virtually every article" printed in those papers. Searching this database is free with a $1 charge each time the full text of an archived article is down loaded. The search features are excellent, allowing you to limit your search to a specific year and sort the articles by date, relevance, or term frequency, all supported by an excellent "Help" file.

Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com/News/Newspapers/

Finally, if none of these sites suit your needs, Yahoo's index of indexes will help you locate one that does. Yahoo organizes newspapers by subject areas such as "Professional Organizations," "College and University," and "Commercial" in addition to "Regional" and "Indices." Browsing the indexes available on Yahoo reveals the wide variety of newspaper sources available as well as services and features they may (or may not) provide.