“Little Denise Davidson, 5 months old, sleeps peacefully while her mother, Mrs. Donald Davidson, of 278 Clinton St., Bklyn., marches with ban-the-bomb group outside the United Nations. . . .” Dick DeMarsico. Photograph, 1962. New York World-Telegram and Sun Collection. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ62-126854. full caption | bibliographic record

Information about newspapers held by the Serial and Government Publications Division is contained in several lists available only in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Room or on its Web site:

• Data about microfilm holdings for U.S. and foreign newspapers is recorded in card files available in the reading room.
• Frequently requested newspaper titles are listed in “Commonly Used U.S. Newspapers on Microfilm,” available at <http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/cunom_us.html>.
• An inventory of bound newspapers of U.S. states and territories and foreign country holdings after 1801, completed in 1998, is on the Newspaper and Current Periodical Room Web site. See “19th and 20th Century U.S. Newspapers in Original Format: Inventory of Volumes Held in Remote Storage” (<http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/bound/us/inventor.html>) and “19th and 20th Century Foreign Newspapers in Original Format: Inventory of Volumes Held in Remote Storage” (<http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/bound/frn/frnbnd.html>).
• Specific issue-level information is available in a bound-volume card file. U.S. newspapers published before 1801 held by the division are listed in “Eighteenth-Century American Newspapers in the Library of Congress” <http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/18th/>.
• Extremely useful for researchers who need to know what is available for a single year or a specific time period in multiple geographic areas is the “Chronological Index of Newspapers for the Period 1801-1967 in the Collections of the Library of Congress” compiled by Paul E. Swigart (N&CPR). This twelve-volume set is arranged first by year and then by state and city. It lists newspapers in both microfilm and bound volumes. Chronological lists covering 1940-1989 are available online. <http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/chronological/chronological.html>.

As holdings information is added, the Library's online catalog will become the primary way to determine the Library's holdings of newspapers, and researchers will be able to determine what is available by accessing the catalog through the World Wide Web.

SEARCH TIP#1: To determine what newspapers from a specific place the Library of Congress may own, use the “Command Keyword” search in the online catalog (which allows you to search for information in specific fields of the bibliographic record), specify the index you wish to search, and limit the search to serials. You can combine the subject “Newspapers” with a specific place of publication.

For example, to find newspapers held by the Library published in Chicago, you would construct the search using the general index for subject (KSUB) and the index for publication information (KPUB):

KSUB newspapers AND KPUB chicago [with a limit of type=Serial (Periodical, Newspaper, etc.)]

SEARCH TIPS#2: The Library's practice in cataloging newspapers is to create a new bibliographic record each time there is a title change. Thus, a researcher looking for a specific newspaper may find multiple records for the needed title, and will need to locate the title for the date needed to determine the Library's holdings. You may need to trace the “Continues” and “Continued by” links in each record for the newspaper until you find the record that covers the date needed.

For example, the newspaper known as the Laramie Boomerang of Wyoming, has fifteen bibliographic records associated with it—and the Library does not own the full run of the newspaper (our holdings begin with 1901)! If you were looking for an issue from 1933, you would need to look at the bibliographic record with the title Laramie Republican-Boomerang.