How to use Newsstream for newspaper research

There are many reasons you might need to do research in a newspaper archive. You might be interested in how an event was reported in London vs Glasgow vs New York. You might be interested in when a term like ‘Brexit’ or ‘Black Lives Matter’ first appeared in the newspaper media. You might be fact-checking or researching an article you’re writing. Or you might just want to read more so you can become a better writer.

The newspaper archive that the University of Sunderland Library subscribes to is called Newsstream. You may be familiar with Lexis UK Newspapers, which the Library used to subscribe to. We chose a new subscription to Newsstream because it offers better coverage and a better search interface. If you’re familiar with both products, let me know what you think of this new one!

Newsstream contains online full-text access to over 600 UK regional, national and broadsheet newspapers as well as international press such as The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Bangkok Post, South China Morning Post, Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Jerusalem Post.  Coverage goes back as far as January 1982 to the present day for some titles, although this varies by publication.

Remember, you might also be interested in how the news is reported on the TV and radio, and you can use Box of Broadcasts to do the same types of searching as you can in Newsstream for print media. More about how to do news research in BoB and on the web can be found here.

Why should I use Newsstream when I can just look on Google?

1. No paywall in Newsstream – the library has paid on your behalf
2. Not just online content – you get the entire archive of what appeared in print and online. In free newspaper archives you never know what will be there and what won’t.
3. See how the same event is covered by different newspapers and authors. Newsstream has all the content in one place, rather than having to go to each news outlet’s individual website.
4. Newsstream sometimes has the pdf of the layout of print news magazines
5. Search precisely and comprehensively – Newsstream is designed for research and scholarship whereas Google is designed to harvest your data.
6. More!

Here is a 10 minute video tutorial which walks you through how to access Newsstream from anywhere you have internet access.