How To

How to Find Old Newspaper Articles Online....For Free

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By David Sarokin
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The Sinking of the Titanic

Old newspaper articles are a great resource, regardless of whether you're searching for your family's history, or writing a school paper. Even if you're just curious about historical events -- the sinking of the Titanic, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, or the price of gasoline in 1915 -- there's nothing quite like seeing the headlines, stories and advertisements from the actual newspapers of the day. This eHow article tells you where you can find old newspaper archives online, for free.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Your curiosity
Internet connection

Step 1

Think about what you want to search for. This may sound like a Big Duh!, but it pays to give some thought to the actual search terms you'll be using. Say you're searching for news of your grandfather. If his name was Jedibiah Utzenpfeffer, you might have pretty good luck searching just on his name alone. But if grandpa's name was Robert Smith, you'll need some additional details -- like a town he lived in, his job, big event in his life, spouse's name -- in order to narrow down the results.
Step 2

Head for Google News Archives and begin your search. Believe it or not, their collection of newspaper archives spans more than four centuries, and is a very rich resource.
Step 3

Now for the best part. Step two, above, will give you a good feel for how many articles are available, and what they cover. But a lot of the results are from subscription services that can cost a lot to access. Instead, head to XooxleAnswers.com and click on the Free Newspaper Archives link where you'll find a terrific collection of links to (go ahead, guess) free newspaper archives. Use these to fine tune your search, and get just what you're looking for.

Tips & Warnings

If a general search at Google News Archives turns up too many results, use the timeline and date features to narrow things down to the right era. For instance, searching on "Titanic" will produce a ton of results about the movie, unless you narrow the search down to 1912, in which case, you'll get great stories about the real thing.
Spend some time getting familiar with the collections at XooxleAnswers, as they cover a lot of territory, both historically and geographically. Choose the newspaper and magazine collections that are best suited to your particular interests and the time in place in history you want to know about.
DANGER! There's something very habit-forming about perusing old newspapers. Before you get started, make sure you're calendar's clear, and there are plenty of snacks on hand.

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Comments

apalmer said

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on 3/6/2009 Thanks for the info. I do genealogy work and I love history so this is great new! (Pardon the pun...) 5*

newyorkminute92 said

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on 1/16/2009 Not bad info, though most of the links on that xoogle site to the actual publication sites don't work. I would rather just pay $150 a year and go to like highbeam.com and search for the article or search their encyclopedias and know I will get the best article.. But that's just me.