Historical Newspapers Provide Insight

As a librarian working with researchers at Penn State, I get to see how newspapers and other news sources are utilized in a wide range of subject areas. Of course, in the present moment, these sources are used for staying on top of current events. But after the passage of time, news sources play a valuable role in helping researchers understand how historical events were being discussed at the time they were happening. Similarly, even looking at the advertising can provide a glimpse into the average person's concerns, and also their aspiration.

And almost all news sources throughout history has at least one kind of commonality attached to them, for example, a town or city name, an ethnicity, or even a political perspective (prior to the 20th century, many newspapers were published by political parties).

Want to explore this further?

Check out the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive where you can browse and search newspapers by title, by date, and by city/county (mostly pre-1923). Or, for the rest of the United States, there's Chronicling America, from the Library of Congress. In both places, you'll find Republican and Democratic newspapers, urban and rural newspapers, and ones from many different languages and ethnic perspectives. Enjoy!