We have a lot of fantastic digital resources, many of them courtesy of the Arkansas State Library. Because we’re a library in Arkansas, we have access to their Traveler Database. For this entire year, every month, we’re going to look at the different features available on these databases. For this month, we’re going to focus on newspapers.
To get to the newspaper resources, follow the directions in the first post of this series.
Then click on News and Newspapers to access these resources.
Most of these databases provide fairly contemporary newspaper articles. So, these likely aren’t going to help you if you need historical newspapers. (However, we can help you with that if you ask at the library!)
If you hit a paywall for a newspaper article online, though, it would be worthwhile to come to the database and see if you can access it that way.
First up are Canadian newspapers through Canadian Newsstream. It includes everything from small regional papers to national papers of record, like The Globe and Mail.
The Ethnic NewsWatch collection contains a lot of papers that are not accessible online elsewhere, and it also includes a wider range of historical articles than the other databases, with some coverage stretching back to the 1950s. It features dozens of Hispanic publications, as well as publications that offer Native, Asian, African American, Arab, and Appalachian voices, among others.
Global Breaking Newswires offers breaking news from international newswires. These are generally not going to be in-depth coverage of a story, but it is an easy way to get multiple perspectives on current events as they happen.
International Newsstream is devoted to non-US and Canadian newspapers. It includes access to prominent papers ranging from The Times and The Guardian in the UK to El Norte in Mexico to The Jerusalem Post to The South China News Post in Asia and more.
The U.S. Newsstream offers the same coverage but for American newspapers. You can access articles from publications that are usually paywalled for non-subscribers online, including Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times. It took some patience, but I was also able to locate New York Times recipes the internet usually denies me through this database.
What’s your favorite digital resource the library offers? Do you use the Traveler databases? Which of these databases are you most excited to try? Tell us in the comments!
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