How to Read Old Newspaper Articles for Free

Old newspaper articles can help for school, research and general knowledge. It can also be fun to locate relatives and family accomplishments by looking up old articles. Some online newspaper archives are subscription only. However, there are places where you can read old newspaper articles for free.

• Try Google News Archives. Google News Archives has many old, free newspaper articles. Input the search criteria, and Google News Archives will search available articles spanning centuries. While most articles on Google News Archives are free, you may have to pay a fee to read some of them. Click through the various links to locate free relevant articles.


• Go to the newspaper's website. Many national and local newspapers have archived historic content to an online database. Some of these archives may be free to use, especially local archives. National newspapers may offer some content for free. For example, the "New York Times" offers free access to articles before 1923 and after 1986, up to 100 articles per month.


• Visit a public or school library. Many libraries pay for services, such as ProQuest and Lexis-Nexis, which allow library members to access article archives for free. Libraries may charge you per page to print articles.


• Try free online article databases. Places such as Free Newspaper Archives in the US  or the SmallTownPapers website can help locate free local newspaper archives.


• Visit paid newspaper archive websites. One popular newspaper archive website is NewspaperArchive. This is a paid subscription site. However, it offers a selection of special collection newspapers for free browsing.