African-American newspapers

Users of the British Library's newspaper collections have three main choices: if they have a Reader's Pass, they can come to the Newsroom at our St Pancras site, or use the reading room at our Yorkshire site in Boston Spa; or they can subscribe to the British Newspaper Archive, the service that provides access to our digitised British and Irish newspapers - 400 titles, and now over 10 million pages. We also have historic newspapers available via Gale Digital Collections. All electronic newpspaers resources to which we contribute or to which we subscribe are freely available to anyone with a Reader's Pass who comes to either our St Pancras or Boston Spa sites.

It is possible, however, to access some newspaper collections remotely i.e. wherever you might be sitting, and without payment. A small number of newspaper collections that we have licensed from third parties (so not newspapers from our physical collections that have been digitised) are available via the British Library's Remote Eresources service. This isn't so well known about, and is more than worth highlighting. It's a service available to anyone with a Reader's Pass, and all you need to do is enter your username and password, agree to the conditions of use, and you're in.

The newspapers all come via Readex, who provide a wide range of online research resources to academic libraries. Their newspaper and news-related offerings that we can provide access to remotely are:

• African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 - provides online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection features papers from more than 35 states - including many rare and historically significant 19th century titles.
• Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans 1639-1800 - contains virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America during the 17th and 18th centuries.
• Early American Newspapers, Series I - reproductions of hundreds of historic newspapers, providing more than one million pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images. 
• Latin American Newspapers Series 1, 1805-1922 - part of Readex's World Newspaper Archive, this database provides access to more than 35 fully searchable Latin American newspapers including key titles from Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Peru.
• World Newspaper Archive: African Newspapers, 1800-1922 - part of Readex's World Newspaper Archive. African Newspapers includes over 30 fully searchable African newspapers including key publications from Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

We have other news-related resources available via Remote Eresources:

• Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Daily Reports 1974-1996 - US government operation which translates the text of daily broadcasts, government statements, and select news stories from non-English sources. Covers: Middle East & North Africa, 1974-1987; Near East & South Asia, 1987-1996; South Asia, 1980-1987; Sub-Saharan Africa, 1974-1996; China, 1974-1996; Asia & the Pacific, 1974-1987; Eastern Europe, 1974-1996; Soviet Union, 1974-1996.
• US Congressional Serial Set - reports, documents and journals of the US Senate and House of Representatives in full text, 1817-1994. 

For more on our Remote Eresources, and what you can and cannot do with them, see our FAQs page.