Newspapers and news sources: Historical and Foreign Language News
How do I find historical and foreign language newspapers?
Many of our large Current News databases include historical and foreign-language newspapers from around the world.
They include:
- Significant archival collections, so are themselves great sources of historical information.
- Newspapers published from all geographic regions and hence many in languages other than English.
We also have databases that specialise in collecting historical news sources.
You will find below:
- A select list of those that specialise in English and foreign language historical newspapers.
- You will also find newspapers and other forms of periodicals and historical ephemera in our Historical Research Library Guide.
A selection of foreign-language newspapers and databases has been provided.
- Note that these lists are not exhaustive - search OneSearch to check for additional resources.
- See our Asian and European Languages Library Guide for more about finding foreign language sources.
Tip! To find archival editions of individual newspaper titles - like The Observer, Pravda, The Sydney Morning Herald, The New York Times etc. - simply search for the newspaper title in OneSearch.
A selection of mainly English historical newspaper databases.
- African Newspapers: from the World newspaper archiveAfrican Newspapers, Series 1 and 2, 1800-1925, offers unmatched coverage of the people, issues and events that shaped the continent during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Featuring titles from Algeria to Angola, Zambia to Zimbabwe, this unique resource chronicles the evolution of Africa through eyewitness reporting, editorials, legislative information, letters, poetry, advertisements, obituaries and other items
- British Library NewspapersGale 19th Century collection of selection of 48 British Newspapes specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain.
- Burney Newspapers Collection - 17th - 18th CenturySearchable full-text access to the British Library's collection of the newspapers, pamphlets, and books gathered by Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817)--the largest and most comprehensive collection of early English news media
- Economist Historical ArchiveThis database features more than 8,000 issues of The Economist since first publication in 1843. It delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2009.
- Historic American NewspapersSearch America's historic newspaper pages from 1770-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
- Nichols Newspapers Collection - 17th -18th CenturyFeatures the newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and broadsheets that form the Nichols newspaper collection held at the Bodleian library in Oxford, United Kingdom. All 296 volumes of bound material, covering the period 1672-1737 have been digitized.
- The Scotsman - Proquest Historical Newspaper ArchiveYou can also search the Proquest Historical Newspaper Archive for the New York Times and The Guadian and The Observer.
The UWA Library subscribes to a range of foreign-language historical newspaper databases. Some of the foreign language historical newspapers available through OneSearch are listed below.
Tip! A lot of historical newspapers are freely available through Google. For example, Euopeana Newspapers contains a huge collection of freely available European historical newspapers.
Asian Language Resources
- China Core NewspapersFull-text newspaper articles from 1000 publicly issued newspapers in mainland China since 2000; issued in 10 subject databases.
- Dong-A llbo (Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese)A leading newspaper in Seoul, South Korea, founded and published in 1920.
- NewspaperSGThis database contains archived news content of 17 Singapore newspapers, including The Straits Times (1845-2006), the Singapore Chronicle and Commercial Register(1831-1836), as well as a preview of TODAY, Weekend TODAYand The Business Times (Singapore)
- Singapore/Malaysian Collection SMCBibliographic database that indexes and abstracts items from published and unpublished material relating to Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and ASEAN
- Yomidas RekishikanIncludes the full text of the major Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun, from its initial publication in 1874 to date, as well as full text of the Daily Yomiuri, its English language equivalent. Articles are keyword indexed up to 1986, and can be searched full-text from 9/1/1986 to present.
European Language Newspaper Sources
- ZEFYS: ZeitungsinformationssystemDeveloped by the Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), ZEFYS is the portal for accessing digitized German historical newspapers. Currently, it provides more than 90,000 issues of over 80 historical newspapers originating from Germany and other countries publishing in German.
Finding free historical newspapers online
Did you know that many historical newspapers are freely available online?
For American and Canadian historical news sources, search the Google News Archive, while historical Australian news sources are available through Trove.
Historical WA newspapers in Trove
You can locate locate historical WA newspapers in Trove. Here is the link to the available Newspapers
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