Recommended Resources

America's Historical Newspapers

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Digital archive of nearly 1,270 newspapers and news pamphlets from the United Kingdom, totalling nearly 1 million pages. Collected by the Reverend Charles Burney, this unique collection represents the largest single archive of 17th and 18th century news media available from the British Library.
Purchase was made possible by Hal F. and Barbra B. Higginbotham.

A collection of American newspapers, magazines, and other primary source materials, mostly from the 19th century, but with some 18th century items. Newspapers and magazines nclude the Virginia Gazette, Pennsylvania Gazette, The Liberator, Godey's Lady's Book, and a selection of African American newspapers. Books include a large collection of county histories, Civil War memoirs and regimental histories, and more.

Contains digital copies of articles from about 1,000 American newspapers from all the current 50 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1900, with strongest coverage of the first half of the 19th century.
Our subscription includes Series 1 and 2 of the publisher's Early American Newspapers series, described here by the publisher. Not every issue of every newspaper is available, but the publisher continues to fill gaps in the database.
Purchase was made possible, in part, by the President's Initiative Fund.

Ongoing project to "create a [free] national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all the states and U.S. territories published between 1836 and 1922."
As of October 2011, this site enables you to search and view over 4.1 million pages dating from 1859 to 1922 from 581 newspapers in 25 states and the District of Columbia.
The project also provides a comprehensive directory of historic American newspapers.

Contains about 140,000 entries (publication titles, publication dates, etc.) for newspapers published from 1690 to the present. For example, here is the entry for the (Lexington, Virginia) News Gazette newspaper.
You can search an ever-growing database of the content of these newspapers.

This is a list from Annie, the W&L library catalog, of the microfilm copies of various early American newspapers (not including Virginia newspapers) in the Leyburn Library collection. Early American newspapers from Virginia are listed here.

This is a list from Annie, the W&L library catalog, of the microprint (not microfilm) copies of early Virginia newspapers in the Leyburn Library collection. Early American newspapers from other states are listed here.

This work-in-progress is an index to a collection of about 1,500 historical newspaper issues donated to W&L by alumnus Fred Farrar. The issues in the collection cover "colonial, Early Republic and Victorian-era America," but also include some English and French materials.
If you have questions about this project, please contact Doug Cumming.
Users of this collection also may be interested in the library's microfilm holdings of early American newspapers from Virginia and other states.

Few of these items could be considered "newspapers," but in this relevant site Google Books provides issue-by-issue, page-by-page images of extensive runs of over 100 American popular magazines, such as Life and Popular Science.

Browse or search issues of Harper's Weekly, America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper.

The historical New York Times database offers full page and article images from 1851 through 2008, with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
Other newspaper databases offer online access to more recent issues of the New York Times.

The link above connects to a simplified version of this weekly newspaper for Lexington and Rockbridge County.
A new page-by-page view became available March 2013, but you must be an individual subscriber to have access.
The subscription version also includes an online archive of issues dating from 30 May 2012. Leyburn Library also has older issues on paper and microfilm.
Articles dating from December 2008-to-current are available in the Newsbank database.

The Library of Congress is now loading issues of the old Lexington Gazette into its Chronicling America database. As of April 2011, issues from 1898 to 1912 may be browsed and searched.

A list of newspapers located within the state of Virginia that have been "cataloged and inventoried."
This database is used primarily to identify the newspapers published within a particular city or county in Virginia, or published in another U.S. state or foreign country. Entries trace title-changes of publications, but do not indicate which libraries own which issues. You probably can get more detailed information on any particular newspaper by using the Database.

A searchable database of catalog records of almost 6,000 newspaper titles housed within Virginia.
The information here is more detailed than in the Bibliography, but it is more difficult to identify all the publications from a particular city or county.

Digitized copies of this Richmond, Virginia newspaper, dated November 1860 through December 1865. As of November 2006, there are 1,384 issues of the paper available online.

"This is primarily a subject only index to articles appearing in the Richmond-Times Dispatch and the Richmond News Leader between the 1940's and 1985."
This is not the same index as the microfiche "Freeman File," which covers much the same span of time in the same newspapers.

The Wall Street Journal (1889-1995) offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue. Access to articles after 1993 is available from Dow Jones Factiva

The historical Washington Post offers full page and article images from 1877 to 1995 with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
Other newspaper databases offer online access to more recent issues of the Washington Post.