Searching and reading historical news sources can be challenging. The lists below provide links to helpful resources for understanding how 19th C. journalism worked and how to find and understand news materials from that time period.
Liddle, Dallas. “Reflections on 20,000 Victorian Newspapers: ‘Distant Reading’ The Times Using The Times Digital Archive.” Journal of Victorian Culture 17, no. 2 (June 2012): 230–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2012.683151.
Nicholson, Bob. “Counting Culture; or, How to Read Victorian Newspapers from a Distance.” Journal of Victorian Culture 17, no. 2 (June 2012): 238–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2012.683331.
Soni, Sandeep, Lauren Klein, and Jacob Eisenstein. “Abolitionist Networks: Modeling Language Change in Nineteenth-Century Activist Newspapers.” ArXiv:2103.07538 [Cs], March 12, 2021. http://arxiv.org/abs/2103.07538.
John L. Brooke, “Print and Politics,” in A History of the Book in America, vol. 2, An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840, ed. Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010): 179-190. https://library.usi.edu/record/737413?ln=en
Jeffrey D. Groves, “Introduction: Periodicals and Serial Publication,” in A History of the Book in America, vol. 3, The Industrial Book, 1840-1880, ed. Scott E. Casper, et. al. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007): 224-230. https://library.usi.edu/record/772726?ln=en
Richard L. Kaplan, “From Partisanship to Professionalism: The Transformation of the Daily Press,” in A History of the Book in America, vol. 4, Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880-1940, ed. Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009): 116-139. https://library.usi.edu/record/737414?ln=en
John Nerone, “Newspapers and the Public Sphere,” in A History of the Book in America, vol. 3, The Industrial Book, 1840-1880, ed. Scott E. Casper, et. al. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007): 230-248. https://library.usi.edu/record/772726?ln=en
Michael Schudson, “Persistence of Vision: Partisan Journalism in the Mainstream Press,” in A History of the Book in America, vol. 4, Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880-1940, ed. Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009): 140-150. https://library.usi.edu/record/737414?ln=en
Andie Tucher, “Newspapers and Periodicals,” in A History of the Book in America, vol. 2, An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840, ed. Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010): 389-408. https://library.usi.edu/record/737413?ln=en
Finding information in historical newspaper searches requires choosing the right keywords -- most of these databases do NOT work like Google, and choosing the right words can make or break your search. This gets even tricker for historical sources because spelling and word usage have changed over time -- words used in one way today may have been used in quite another in 1845, for example. Some strategies for picking the right words:
1. Use reference databases like CREDO Reference or Oxford Reference Online to gather basic information about your subject, including names, dates, locations, concepts, etc.
2. Remember that some sources will use US spellings (color, favorite) and others will use UK spellings (colour, favourite). Use Boolean operators (see the Search Tricks tab in this Guide) to capture these changes in spelling and usage.
3. Use the Oxford English Dictionary's Historical Thesaurus (linked below, along with some helpful guidance for using it) to find words that may have changed over time.
Most databases make use of a set of operators and punctuation tools that allow you to make your searches either more precise/narrow or more expansive/broad.
Use quotation marks around a phrase, sentence, name, or term in order to get the search engine to look for that exact thing (those precise words in that order and relation to each other). Searching for "murder trial" gets narrower results than searching for murder trial.
Use these words (usually in ALL CAPS) in your searches to change the number and kind of results you get when you combine different search terms.
AND is good for narrowing your search -- it tells the search engine you only want results that contain both of your search terms. This is a good option for finding material that connects specific names, dates, and events to each other (like so: "Abraham Lincoln" AND "Stephen Douglas")
OR is good for broadening your search -- it tells the search engine that you want results that contain at least one of your search terms. This is a good option for checking out alternate forms of your terms or checking for different ways to talk about the same event (like so: "Abraham Lincoln" OR "Lincoln-Douglas debates")
NOT is good for eliminating unwanted results -- it tells the search engine that you only want one term, not the other. This is a good option for narrowing your results by eliminating unwanted information (like so: "Abraham Lincoln" NOT president).
Parentheses join terms and operators and effectively make them into a single thing. They are useful for combining sets of terms and operators to create more complex searches. "Abraham Lincoln" AND ("Stephen Douglas" OR "Lincoln-Douglas debates").
All of the internal and external databases shared in this guide provide a wide variety of filters or limiters (often in the form of checkboxes down one side of the results screen) that make it possible to limit or organize search results more effectively. Pay particular attention to limiters for dates, subject terms, and publication titles, which may be especially helpful for taking a broad search and whittling the results down to a more reasonable number.
For your work in history, you are expected to use the Notes & Bibliography citation style governed by the 17th Edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. The links below provide examples and additional resources to help you to correctly format your references.
Both Microsoft Word and Google Docs have easy, convenient built-in options for automatically inserting and formatting footnotes in your paper. Use these links to learn how it's done!
This work is licensed by the David L. Rice Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8037-7120