Subject guides: Newspapers: Getting started

Key databases

Australian newspapers are indexed (and may link to full text) in the following Monash and open source databases. Not all the resources are listed below, so please check the full list of databases:

A full list of news databases available in the library can be found here.

Access world news : research collection (NewsBank) This link opens in a new window This comprehensive news collection from NewsBank is ideal for exploring issues and events at the local, regional, national [Australian] and international level. Its diverse source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Use it to explore a specific event or to compare a wide variety of viewpoints on topics such as politics, business, health, sports, cultural activities and people.
Factiva This link opens in a new window Factiva provides full text access to Australian newspapers, and newspapers and news wires from around the world. Besides newspapers, the database allows users to browse through a collection of global content sources from 200 countries – including continuously updated newswires from Dow Jones and Reuters, journals and magazines, websites, blogs, and multimedia. Factiva also includes brief company and industry profiles, financial information for listed companies worldwide, and global coverage of financial market data.
Media scan (Informit) This link opens in a new window This bibliographic database indexed articles from daily newspapers, and was specifically designed for students and researchers in Australian secondary schools and universities. The following newspapers were indexed: Sydney Morning Herald (1996-), The Age (1991-), The Australian (1991-), The Herald Sun (1991-), The Bulletin (1991-), The Courier Mail (1995-), Sunday Mail (1994-), Adelaide Advertiser (1997), West Australian (1996-1997). Ceased updating in June 2009.
ProQuest This link opens in a new window The Proquest platform is a leading multidisciplinary portal allowing cross-search access to many key online databases, both full text and bibliographic. Databases cover academic and professional disciplines such as business, law, education, computing, science, technology, engineering, arts, and medicine, and consist of scholarly journals, books, video & audio, dissertations & theses, newspapers and more. Search multiple databases simultaneously or select from amongst individual database titles. A complete list of database titles available to Monash University students and staff is available at the site.
Ryerson index to contemporary death notices and obituaries in Australian newspapers This link opens in a new window The Ryerson Index is a free index to death notices appearing in Australian newspapers. The date range covered extends from the Sydney Gazette of 1803 up to newspapers published within the last week or so. The Index also includes many funeral notices, and some probate notices and obituaries. The date ranges indexed vary from paper to paper and are not necessarily complete within that range. Most of what has been indexed is contemporary, that is, within the last 30 years. The Sydney Morning Herald is indexed from 1831.
Trove This link opens in a new window The Australian National Library's Trove service helps users find and use resources relating to Australia. It provides integrated access to over 45 million items from a range of the National Library's collaborative services and from elsewhere. Metadata is aggregated from Australian sources including: The Australian National Bibliographic Database - containing location information from more than 1,200 Australian libraries, The Picture Australia program, The Australian Research Online program, The Music Australia program, The Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts, and The People Australia program, and some overseas sources.

Google News Archive Searches Newspapers from Australia and the World over the past 200 years. Limited coverage of Australian newspapers.
Trove: Digitised newspaper titles and its coverage A searchable newspaper database from The National Library of Australia.

A full list of news databases available in the library can be found here. Below are some key databases to use when searching for international newspapers and news resources:

Access world news : research collection (NewsBank) This link opens in a new window This comprehensive news collection from NewsBank is ideal for exploring issues and events at the local, regional, national [Australian] and international level. Its diverse source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Use it to explore a specific event or to compare a wide variety of viewpoints on topics such as politics, business, health, sports, cultural activities and people.
British humanities index : BHI. This link opens in a new window See: Humanities index
Factiva This link opens in a new window Factiva provides full text access to Australian newspapers, and newspapers and news wires from around the world. Besides newspapers, the database allows users to browse through a collection of global content sources from 200 countries – including continuously updated newswires from Dow Jones and Reuters, journals and magazines, websites, blogs, and multimedia. Factiva also includes brief company and industry profiles, financial information for listed companies worldwide, and global coverage of financial market data.
Maisaku This link opens in a new window Access is restricted to one concurrent user only Complete full-text content of Mainichi shimbun, one of the major Japanese newspapers. Covers Mainichi shimbun from 1872 onwards, Journal Shukan ekonomisuto from 1989 onwards, Mainichi daily news (in English) from 2008 onwards, Mainichi yoron sachi, 20-seiki daijiken, Mainichi shimbun shashi etc. One access only.
Nikkei Telecom 21 This link opens in a new window Nikkei Telecom21 is Japan's largest online database on business. It provides coverage of the Japanese business and financial community through current news reports from these Japanese language newspapers: Nihon keizai shinbun, Nikkei ryūtsū shinbun MJ, Nikkei kinʼyū shinbun, Nikkei sangyō shinbun. Other resources include Nikkei corporation profile, Nikkei Who's who, stock quotations, bond quotations, economic indicators, market forecasts, and in English, Nikkei weekly and Nikkei major articles.
ProQuest This link opens in a new window The Proquest platform is a leading multidisciplinary portal allowing cross-search access to many key online databases, both full text and bibliographic. Databases cover academic and professional disciplines such as business, law, education, computing, science, technology, engineering, arts, and medicine, and consist of scholarly journals, books, video & audio, dissertations & theses, newspapers and more. Search multiple databases simultaneously or select from amongst individual database titles. A complete list of database titles available to Monash University students and staff is available at the site.
Readex - all search This link opens in a new window Readex AllSearch is a platform for effectively searching across various Readex collections. It combines digital collections and document types, including historical imprints, newspapers and government documents, providing access to: America's Historical Newspapers ; American State Papers ; Civil Rights in America; Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports ; U.S. Congressional Serial Set ; and selected Newspaper Archives.
Russian central newspapers (UDB-COM) This link opens in a new window The Universal Database of Russian Newspapers (UDB-COM) provides comprehensive coverage of national news, current events, economic developments and cultural events in Russia. Official sources (Rossiiskaia gazeta, Krasnaia zvezda, ITAR-TASS), independent media and partisan publications are all represented, thus offering a wide array of opinions and perspectives. Several English-language newspapers including the notable Moscow Times, widely read by the international community in the Russian capital, constitute an important part of the database.
Ukrainian publications (UDB-UKR) This link opens in a new window This database imcludes content from Ukraine's leading periodicals, covering a broad range of political, economic, and cultural affairs, some with archives from 1997. Titles and back issues are added on a regular basis. Publications are in Russian, Ukrainian, and English. Topics include Ukraine's progress along the reform path, the view and positions of various political forces, changes in legislation, ethnic relations, and organizational trends in development of the armed forces.

Google News Archive Searches Newspapers from Australia and the World over the past 200 years. Limited coverage of Australian newspapers.

A full list of news databases available in the library can be found here. Below are some key databases to use when searching for historical and archival news resources:

Burney newspapers collection This link opens in a new window This database features the newspapers and news pamphlets gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757 - 1817). It is a comprehensive collection of 17th and 18th century English news media. The 700 or so bound volumes of newspapers and news pamphlets were published mostly in London; however there are also some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and a few examples from the American colonies, Europe and India.
19th century British newspapers This link opens in a new window See: British Library newspapers

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers Chronicling America is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages from 1836-1922, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. An NEH award program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.
Europeana Newspapers Access to full text historic newspapers in European collections

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) daily reports (Readex/NewsBank) This link opens in a new window Created by the U.S. intelligence community to benefit U.S. policy makers and analysts, FBIS Daily Reports offer foreign views and perspectives on historical events from thousands of monitored broadcasts and publications. Translated into English from more than 50 languages, these comprehensive media reports from around the globe include news, interviews, speeches and editorial commentary. Topics range from political, military and social issues, to economics, science and technology. This database covers: the Cold War, China, the Middle East, Latin America, the Soviet Union, and more, from 1974 to 1996.
Gale NewsVault (via Gale primary sources) This link opens in a new window Gale NewsVault delivers the definitive cross-searching experience for exploring Gale's range of historical newspaper and collections. Users can simultaneously search or browse across multiple products owned by their institution, including: 17th-18th century Burney Collection newspapers, and the historial archives of the Daily Mail [1896-2004], Economist [1843-2013], Listener [1929-1991] , Illustrated London News [1842-2003], Sunday Times [1822-2006], the Times [1785-2011], and the Times Literary Supplement [1902-2012].

Google News Archive Searches Newspapers from Australia and the World over the past 200 years. Limited coverage of Australian newspapers.

ProQuest historical newspapers. New York Times (1851-2017) This link opens in a new window Includes full page images and article images from the New York Daily Times (1851 to 1857) and the New York Times from its first issue in 1857 to 2014. The collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue, cover to cover, in downloadable PDF files.
South Asian newspapers (Readex/NewsBank) This link opens in a new window This database provides online access to a select group of South Asian newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Featuring English-, Gujarati- and Bengali-language papers published in India, in the regions of the Subcontinent that now comprise Pakistan, and in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), South Asian Newspapers offers extensive coverage of the people, issues and events that shaped the Indian Subcontinent between 1864 and 1922. Key publications range from Amrita Bazar Patrika (Calcutta), Bankura Darpana (Bankura, India), Madras Mail (Madras),to Tribune (Lahore, Pakistan) and the Ceylon Observer (Sri Lanka).
Sunday times digital archive, 1822-2016 This link opens in a new window The nineteenth-century run of the Sunday Times remains fairly inaccessible outside of this collection, and its content had been relatively unknown. Now this rich, historical social and cultural content is made available to researchers via this archive. The twentieth-century run of this weekly newspaper is powerful in its hard-hitting investigative journalism and thoughtful analysis, with in-depth information and widely researched, long-term news stories. It is an important resource for all humanities and social sciences courses.
Trove This link opens in a new window The Australian National Library's Trove service helps users find and use resources relating to Australia. It provides integrated access to over 45 million items from a range of the National Library's collaborative services and from elsewhere. Metadata is aggregated from Australian sources including: The Australian National Bibliographic Database - containing location information from more than 1,200 Australian libraries, The Picture Australia program, The Australian Research Online program, The Music Australia program, The Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts, and The People Australia program, and some overseas sources.

Trove: Digitised newspaper titles and its coverage A searchable newspaper database from The National Library of Australia.

Informit TVNews This link opens in a new window indexes Australian television news, current affairs and selected documentaries from the free-to-air networks with links to the video content. All individual stories are indexed with a detailed synopsis. TVNews enables the searching, browsing, tracking and alerting of television events/items and programs. It is updated daily.
EduTV This link opens in a new window includes films and documentaries in various subjects. Register by clicking the Register link at the top of the Informit EduTV screen and enter your details. Please use your institutional email address and not your private email address. Please note that this resource is for teaching use only.

Databases by Subject: News A complete list of all news related databases available

Newspapers: Getting started

Key databases

How to read newspaper articles with a critical eye