Library Guides: 19th Century British Library Newspapers
19th Century British Library Newspapers
Coverage
The 19th Century British Library Newspapers collection contains full runs of 70
newspapers selected by the British Library to represent nineteenth century Britain. It
includes national and regional newspapers and can be particularly useful if you are
researching local or family history.
Starting
a. Go to iFind Research at https://ifindresearch.swan.ac.uk/ and click on A-Z List of
Databases and Websites. Click on 1 and click on 19th Century British Library
Newspapers. If prompted, enter your Swansea University username and password into
the username and password box (this is the same as your email login). Or:
b. Do an iFind search for 19th Century British Library Newspapers and click on the full
text link.
Searching
There are 3 types of search: Basic, Advanced and Publication Search. You can also
Browse Publications by Location.
Basic search
To carry out a Basic search, use the search box on the home page. Type one or more
search terms into the search box. If you are searching for a phrase, enclose the words in
quotation marks to make sure the words are next to each other.
e.g. “singleton abbey”.
Under the search box you will see that you can choose to search by Keyword or Entire
Document. The Keyword option searches significant fields in documents – this should
produce fewer, more relevant results. The Entire document option searches within the
entire text of all documents in the database. If a Keyword search produces too few results,
try using the Entire Document option.
You can choose to limit your results to a particular publication date or range of dates etc.
You can also search within one newspaper – type the title in the by publication title box
or you can click on Browse Publication Title and select the newspaper you want to
search from a list.
Combining Terms
Terms are combined using the Boolean Operators AND, OR or NOT:
Merthyr AND riot* would find items which are on both Merthyr and riot, riots etc.
Swansea OR copper would find records containing either Swansea or Copper. A larger
number of results will be returned.
Disraeli NOT Gladstone would find articles about Disraeli but not Gladstone.
You can also search for terms within a number of words of another term:
Hafod n3 copper
finds results where the two terms are within 3 words of each other.
Note: If you enter two or more search terms without any Boolean operators between terms
then it is the same as using the n4 between terms – the system will look for a term within 4
words of another term.
Truncation
Use ? to stand for any single letter e.g. wom?n finds woman or women
Use * to stand for more than one letter e.g. bird* finds bird, birds, birding etc.
Use ! to search for one character or no characters e.g. riot! finds riot and riots etc.
Advanced Search
Advanced Search allows you to search in more than one field. Click on the drop down
arrow next to each search box to select the field you want to search in (Keyword,
Document Title, Publication Date etc.)
Fuzzy Search
Historical documents often contain variant/approximate spellings and the Fuzzy search
functionality can be useful as it retrieves near matches on a term or terms. You can select
Low, Medium, and High depending on how closely you want to match your term(s)
e.g. a search for “Llanelli” with fuzzy searching set at Low will return results containing
both "Llanelli" and "Llanelly"
Further Limits
As with Basic Search, you can limit your results to a particular date or publication title. If
you scroll down the Advanced Search screen you’ll see further ways to limit your search
e.g. by publication section, publication frequency, language etc. You can also limit
your results to those articles containing images.
Browse Publications by Location
This option allows you to see which newspapers are available in the database. You can
browse by region and click on the newspaper you wish to search. You can then drill down
to the date you are looking for or you can type a search term into the yellow box to search
for mentions of your term within the publication.
Displaying Results
When you run your search, your results will be returned 20 a page. Click on Sort by if you
would like results to be displayed in a different order e.g. by Publication Title, Publication
Date Descending, Relevance etc.
To view an article, click on Article or Page – if you click on Article you will see that your
keywords are highlighted. To get back to your list of results, click on Results just under
the blue toolbar at the top of the page.
You can review, repeat and revise previous searches by clicking on Previous Searches
above the blue toolbar.
Saving Results
To keep a record of your results (note that this saves a record of your result, not the full
text):
 Click in the checkboxes to the left of any you wish to save
 Click on Marked Items at the top of the screen
 Click on Download, you will now see the different format options available (HTML
etc), click on the blue Download button, click Save and choose a file space to save
to.
To email results to yourself, mark the results as above, click on Marked List, click E-mail
(above the blue toolbar at the top of the screen), choose the email format you would prefer
(HTML or plain text), enter your email address and click Send.
Printing
To print out the article you are viewing, click on Print (above the blue toolbar), select the
format (HTML or pdf) and click Print.
Help
Online help is available by clicking on Help above the blue toolbar on the search screens.
For further help you can contact the Arts and Humanities subject librarians at
artslib@swansea.ac.uk or ask at the Information Desk (Tel: 295697).
Other Historic Newspapers Archives
17TH–18TH CENTURY BURNEY COLLECTION NEWSPAPERS
Swansea University login required for off campus access.
This gives online access to the British Library's collection of newspapers, pamphlets, books and
other materials gathered by Charles Burney (1757-1817). Besides titles published in the British
Isles, it contains papers from British colonies in Asia and the Americas. More than twelve hundred
titles and almost one million pages are included.
TIMES DIGITAL ARCHIVE
Swansea University login required for off campus access.
This provides the entire Times newspaper, from its beginning in 1785 up to 1985, including the full
text of articles, photographs, letters and advertisements.
DAILY MIRROR DIGITAL ARCHIVE
Swansea University login required for off campus access.
This provides access to the full text (full page facsimiles) of the Daily Mirror archive from 1903 to
the present.
ECONOMIST
 The Economist from 1917-1995 is in the Library Store, available on request.
 The Economist from 1843-1916 is on microfilm and microcard, Micro 51/A and Micro 202.
OTHER NEWSPAPERS
The Archives of other newspapers, such as the Guardian, can be viewed online if you pay for
access. Copies of other newspapers are in microfilm in the AV Room.
For alternative formats please contact
Tel: 01792 295697 Email: library@swansea.ac.uk
BW Sept 2015, b.r.williams@swansea.ac.uk
Bb Drive/Database Guides/19thcenturynewspapers.docx