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HY 441 - Research Seminar in U.S. History - The Civil Rights Movement: Newspapers

This guide was created to support HY 441.

How to Search Newspaper Databases

Newspaper databases are found in the Databases & e-Reference Library Resources List. In the tags sidebar, you can filter to only show databases with the newspaper tag. 

Many newspaper databases have "full-text" searching. This means that the database knows all the words in the actual article, and the database will give you search returns of all articles that include those words. 

Considerations for Newspapers

When using newspaper articles, always think about the article critically in the context of the time it was written.

  • Who was the intended audience?
  • Who wrote the article?
  • Who/what entity allowed the article to be published?
  • When was the article written in relation to the event?
  • What contextual factors at the time might have influenced the decision to write and/or print the newspaper article?
  • Do other newspapers at the time agree with the reporter's view?

Search Tips

  • Common or acceptable terms change over time.
    • Try different terms that may have been used in that time period.
    • Look at articles from that time period to collect new terms to try.
  • People may be referred to under different names. Ex: JFK or John Kennedy.
    • Women may be identified by their husband's name.
    • People may have different spellings of the same name, especially in older articles.
    • You can list different versions of a name using Boolean operators in parentheses.
    • ex: (JFK OR "John Kennedy" OR "John F. Kennedy")
  • As you read articles, write down new events and search terms to try.
  • Always filter by date if you are looking for primary sources.