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Serial and Government Publications Division

INTRODUCTION

USING THE COLLECTION

NEWSPAPERS
arrow graphicUsing the Newspaper Collection
Finding Aids
Newspapers by Place and Date
Newspaper Indexes
Full-text Historical Newspapers
Newspaper Histories
Newspaper Bibliographies
Women and the News Business
PATHFINDER: Women's Editions of Daily Newspapers
Finding Women in Newspapers
Women as Audience
Advertisements

PERIODICALS

GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS

POPULAR CULTURE COLLECTIONS

SERIAL AND GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS EXTERNAL SITES

VISIT/CONTACT

Using the Newspaper Collection
see caption below

Around the world in seventy-two days and six hours. 1890. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ61-2126 (b&w film copy neg.)
bibliographic record

Most of the division's newspaper collection is on microfilm. “In general the Library prefers archival microfilm as the permanent medium . . . . Reader demand and political, historical, economic, or cultural significance are factors which may justify retention of the original paper format, although such retention will be on an exceptional basis only” (Collections Policy Statement, U.S. Newspapers, November 1996).2 The division does hold, however, a large collection of bound and portfolio newspapers from the late seventeenth through the early twentieth century. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century newspapers (originals and facsimiles) are considered rare and require special handling and permission for use, as do selected titles from later time periods (for instance, originals of the early nineteenth-century Cherokee Phoenix or a Civil War wallpaper edition of the Vicksburg Daily Citizen). To use these, you must fill out and sign a special request form indicating that you agree to abide by the conditions of use for this material. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century bound newspapers are housed in remote storage and must be requested in advance.

Newspaper titles are listed in the Library's catalog, but only limited holdings information is available. The most complete online holdings information is available for our active U.S. newspapers with complete microfilm holdings information. Specific information about inactive U.S. newspapers are currently being added to the online catalog. If you are coming from outside the Washington area, you should either contact the Newspaper and Current Periodical Room to verify specific holdings or try to find such information through your local library. The United States Newspaper Program (USNP), a union database managed by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), contains holdings information of U.S. newspapers held by the division. Division reference specialists routinely consult the USNP database for division holdings as well as holdings in other institutions for referral purposes. This database is available only for newspapers published in the United States; there is no equivalent for foreign published newspapers held in U.S. libraries.

Possibilities for finding information about women in the division's newspaper collections are vast. Scholars have discovered that the role of women in the news business is more prevalent than once thought, and the importance of women as the subject of the news and as the intended audience of the newspaper is of greater importance as well. Through the newspaper collection such discoveries can still be made.

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