Research Guides: Irish and Irish American Studies: Newspapers

Digitized Newspaper Sources for Irish and Irish American Topics

Digitized newspapers are among the most commonly sought source for exploring Irish and Irish American literary, historical, political, economic, and cultural aspects. Because many historical Irish newspapers were produced prior to Irish independence, they often were collected by British libraries and archives and have been digitized as part of larger UK collections. Keep in mind that reporting on Irish events were often reprinted in British newspapers, including major ones such as the Times of London, with attribution to the local Irish newspaper source, making major British newspapers helpful for many earlier time periods. It is therefore necessary to consult a mix of British and Irish digitized newspaper platforms to find sources.

In addition to the resources below make use of the full list of digitized newspapers listed on the NYU Libraries News and Newspapers guide.

Licensed Sources for NYU Community

British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Key Irish titles offered here include the Freeman's Journal, Belfast News-letter, and Belfast Morning News.
Irish Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
Irish Newspaper Archive contains full-text searchable digitized Irish newspapers, with issues spanning the 1700s to current day, as well as the Radical & Political Newspapers collection with publications related to the political unrest in Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Newspapers with both local and national scope and circulation are included and new titles and issues added regularly.
Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
In addition to U.S. newspapers helpful for Irish American topics, this resource includes the Irish Times and Weekly Irish Times.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers Text-as-Data Collection This link opens in a new window
A computer-readable version of this resources, which includes the Irish Times, for text and data mining projects.
An overview of newspaper, time coverage, and access points can be found on the NYU Libraries guide to the collection.
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Not strictly a newspaper source, but contains items such as weeklies that had a similar function. Contains some Irish titles, notably from Protestant missionary creators.
17th & 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new window
17th & 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers contains the digitized materials (not just newspapers) collected by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) and held in the British Library. A useful source for find information about the United Kingdom and the wider world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.The database's advanced search offers searching publications by title, place, language, section, and date. The Publications Search link includes searching by format, including (among others) books, broadsides, forms, newspapers, and pamphlets.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
America's Historical Newspapers includes articles from local and regional American and Hispanic American newspapers from all 50 states. Coverage dates from 1690 to the early 20th century. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable.

Key External Digitized Newspaper Sources

Genealogy Bank Irish American Newspapers
This genealogy search database contains a number of key Irish American newspapers. Subscription required.
Villanova University Falvey Library Joseph McGarrity Digital Library Collection
McGarrity (1874-1940), an Irish American nationalist, collected a number of important publications that are now open-access available on the Falvey Digital Library.