Newspaper articles

Newspapers & other media

Newspapers

Need to keep up with the latest news about your topic? Or gauge public opinion? Newspapers and the media can be ideal for this.

Advantages Disadvantages
Useful for topical information, government initiatives, specific events & cases, public opinion Written by journalists (who are not experts). Do not have the authority of academic materials, e.g. journals
Quick to search in electronic format Articles may not be researched in depth; there may be inaccuracies
  Articles may be biased
  Articles may be sensationalised in order to sell more copies

Electronic newspapers

Most newspapers have free online editions (sometimes with archives of back copies). However, articles in the free online editions may be abbreviated and their archives are unlikely to go back for many years. 

Full text newspapers articles (identical to the printed version) may be found by using the University's newspaper databases which have huge archives covering more than 20 years in some cases.

  • NewsBank Newspapers UK- Simultaneously search all the national and many of the local UK and Ireland newspapers for the past 10 years. All articles are full text and you may print, save or e-mail any useful articles that you find.
  • Access World News – Simultaneously search newspaper articles from around the world fro the last 30 years. Areas covered include: Africa, Asia, Europe, the Russian Federation, the Pacific Rim, Central and South America, and the Middle East.
  • Lexis Library  – Simultaneously search all the major UK national newspapers (and many of the regional ones) for the last 20 years.
  • UK Press Online - A growing digital library of British newspaper archives from the 19th century to the present day with emphasis on the tabloid press. There is also a specific collection of British newspapers during World War Two featuring the Daily Worker, Fascist Week, Blackshirt and the Yorkshire Post.

For further information on newspapers taken by the library (including databases of historic newspaper articles back to 1600) click here.

Printed newspapers

Printed copies of newspapers (e.g. The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer, The Times) are kept in the journals section on Level 1 of Polhill Library (for one month) and on Level 0 at Park Square (for six months). The latest editions are displayed on the Ground Floor at Polhill Library and on Level 1 at Park Square LRC.

Online news services

  • BBC News - the BBC's news website has an excellent news section with links to the radio stations. You can get RSS feeds from this site to keep you up-to-date with issues.
  • Google News Archive Search - allows browsing of articles that go back over 200 years. Sources covered include many American newspapers including the New York Times, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.
  • Newsfilm Online - is a JISC-funded service comprising a selection of news stories and programme scripts from the ITN/Reuters archives with some 3,000 hours of footage and about 60,000 stories.

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