Newspapers Off the Beaten Path

Researchers have many options for accessing historical full-text archives of major news publications such as the New York Times and Washington Post, or popular magazines like Time and Newsweek. (Search the Duke Libraries Catalog  to see your options in print, electronic, and microformats.) But if you are researching a topic of limited geographic reach, or just interested in finding a variety of perspectives, a search of more specialized news resources might be in order.

Two campus-wide databases provide access to alternative press publications:

• Alternative Press Index Archive covers the period 1969-1990, and indexes the contents of alternative, radical, and left-leaning publications.
• Independent Voices covers the 1960s to the 1980s, and includes full-text scans from participating libraries' alternative press archives (including Duke's own Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture). The collection includes some digitized editions of the Durham publication North Carolina Anvil: A Weekly Newspaper of Politics and the Arts (a predecessor of the Independent Weekly), giving a unique perspective on local history.

Additional resources for searching current and historical news publications can be found in the Duke University Libraries research guide to Newspapers. Some additional databases that can provide valuable historical perspective include:

• African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 spans more than 150 years of African-American newspapers and periodicals.
• Ethnic NewsWatch covers 1959-present, and includes more than 400 newspapers, magazines and journals from the ethnic and minority press around the world.
• GenderWatch dates back to 1970 and includes a mix of women's studies and gender studies newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals.
• Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 spans more than 150 years of publications in English, Spanish, and French, digitized from the University of Houston.
• LGBT Life With Full Text includes magazines, newsletters, and newspapers focused on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues.

For help finding or using news databases – whether they are mainstream publications or a bit off the beaten path – be sure to Ask a Librarian.