Newspapers & Periodicals Research Guide

The American Antiquarian Society is the nation's chief repository for early American newspapers published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States, Canada, and the English-speaking West Indies. The Society has accumulated over 15,000 newspaper titles in 20,000 volumes. Today, AAS has more than two million issues on five miles of shelving. The Society's periodicals collection is also extensive and most titles are in AAS’s online catalog. In the reading room there are checklists for American periodicals by subject, including temperance, women, children, Adventists, etc.

How to Find

• Search the Catalog
  Almost all newspaper titles have a record in the AAS Online Catalog (major exceptions include amateur newspapers and some foreign newspapers)

• Other Places to Search:
• Clarence
  The Clarence database provides item-level information on exactly which newspaper issues AAS holds. Clarence may be searched separately or there are links for the individual newspaper titles in the main catalog.
• Newspaper Inventories, Guides & Directories

Digital Access

Freely Available

• A few newspaper titles have been scanned by AAS, particular those in very fragile condition, and are available in GIGI, the AAS digital image archive

By Subscription (must be at AAS or an institution that has purchased the digital product):

• America’s Historical Newspapers, 1690-1922 (Readex) has digitized many of AAS’s newspapers and includes subsections of African American Newspapers, Hispanic American Newspapers, etc. that can be separately searched
• AAS Historical Periodicals Collection, 1691-1876 (EBSCO) has digitized most of AAS’s periodicals (linked to from the AAS Online Catalog)