News Articles

Finding free online news articles: getting behind paywalls (video)

The following databases contain news articles from thousands of sources, typically from the mid-1990's to the present day. Often just the full text is included, and not photos, graphs, and charts.

• Omni Newspaper search
  • Search across many of the big name newspapers subscribed to by the library for top stories. Limited ability to filter results.
• Omni, Individual Newspapers
  • Search for a specific newspaper title.
• Canadian News @ ProQuest
  • Canadian focus, from big and small papers from across the country. Many options to filter results.
• Factiva
  • Canadian and international focus, and advanced filtering options.
• Nexis Uni
  • International focus, including Canadian content, and advanced search options.

The following databases contain the scanned and searchable images of the entire newspapers.

Many libraries, archives, and other organizations have digitized newspaper content and made it available for free online. You can find titles listed by country on this Wikipedia page that is maintained by librarians from around the world (including the Laurier History Librarian).

• Wikipedia: List of online newspaper archives
• International list of links to online newspaper archives on Wikipedia.

The following collections allow you to search across a larger number of newspapers at one time (many of the individual titles are listed on the Wikipedia link above)

• Chronicling America
  • Includes full content from more than 1,400 U.S. newspapers from 1836 to 1922.
• Our Ontario Newspapers
  • Digitized newspapers from Ontario communities. See "About our newspaper collections" for a title list.
• SFU Digitized Newspapers
  • Includes dozens of local (BC) and Canadian newspapers, including Chinese language, French, and immigrant newspapers. This includes the Berliner Journal (1880-1916), and Canadian Jewish News (1960-1993).
• Google News Archive Search
  • Random listing and years of coverage of a wide number of North American newspapers.

Berliner Journal

• 1859-1924 (microfilm, Laurier Library)
• 1880-1916 (digitized, Simon Fraser University)

Brantford Expositor 

• 1939-1983 (microfilm, Laurier Library)
• 1999-present (digitized, Proquest) 

The Cord (Laurier)

• 1926-2015 (digitized, Laurier Library)

Waterloo Chronicle 

• 1922-1988 (microfilm, Laurier Library)
• 1999-2024 (digitized, Proquest)
• 1886-2016 (digitized, Waterloo Public Library)
  • The Chronicle Telegraph 1901-1922
  • Waterloo County Chronicle 1893-1900

Waterloo Region Record

• 1893 - present (digitized, Proquest)

In addition to the online news archives listed above, the Laurier Library has several archival titles on microfilm, held either at the Waterloo campus on the 3rd floor, or the Annex storage facility. For current issues of these titles, see "Current news sources" above.

• Today's Political Cartoons (Association of Editorial Cartoonists)
  • Contains political cartoons - both national and international, for the past 7 days, with a searchable archive for political cartoons back to 1996.
• SFU Library Editorial Cartoons Collection
  • The Simon Fraser University Library Editorial Cartoons Collection contains over 8000 original drawings published in Canadian newspapers between 1952 and the present.
• News Archives: Library subscriptions
  • Using the sources listed in the section above, in your search change the "Document Type" to "Editorial Cartoon."