Learning about past events through old newspapers is a great way to investigate historical topics and build your research. To assist with this, Catholic University Libraries provides access to the ProQuest Historical Newspaper databases for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. You can search each newspaper individually, all three, or a combination of the three by selecting the databases on the ProQuest database select webpage. These newspapers provide “genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time” (ProQuest, 2026). See the full list of newspapers available in our databases here. Let’s dive into the ProQuest Historical Newspaper databases. 

Accessing Articles

This blog will be showcasing screenshots from the Historical New York Times, but all of the historical newspaper databases have the same interfaces and features. When first accessing these databases, you will see a simple search bar. Use this search bar if you have a general topic in mind, such as the moon landing. Put your search term(s) into the search box and click search. On the results page, click the title of an article you are interested in to read it. When you first open the article, you are in PDF view, which shows a scan of the article. Page view, found next to PDF view, shows where the article is in relation to that issue of the newspaper, and you can use the arrows to change pages within that issue. Next to the PDF and the Page View is the Details/Abstract tab. This tab provides data about the article, such as the title, author, and date of publication, as well as provides a brief summary of the article. Additionally, in the top right corner there are options to create a citation of the article, copy the URL, print, and an all options button with even more export options. 

Features

ProQuest Historical Newspapers offer a variety of filters to help narrow down your search results. On the search results page you will find the filters on the left-hand tool bar. At the top, you can choose how the results are sorted. ProQuest defaults to “relevance”, which has the database show you articles that best match your search terms in descending order. The other options are “Oldest first” and “Most recent first”, which sorts by when the article was published. Next is the limit to full text check box, when checked the database will only include articles that can be read in full. Under this is the publication date filter. Here you can use the bar graph to look for articles in a specific decade, year, month, and day. You can also put a date range (year-month-day) to get articles in a specific range. For example, for the “moon landing” search, placing the publication date filter to July 1969 finds articles that wrote about the moon landing as it was happening. Then you have the publication title, which lets you select any publication titles from the search results. Lastly is the document type filter, which includes articles, front page articles, ad displays, and more.

One last feature worth highlighting is ProQuest’s suggested search terms. These pop up underneath the search bar after you do a search, when clicked on, ProQuest runs a Boolean search with your original search term and the selected suggested search term. This is a great feature to further refine and narrow down your search.

Advanced Searching

In addition to the basic search, there is an advanced search feature. Use this when you have a more concrete idea in mind and want to have a more specific search. The advanced search allows you to create Boolean searches using AND, OR, and NOT to better refine your search. The drop down-boxes to the right allow you to change where in the database record it will search for the search term. Some options are:

• Anywhere- Searches for the selected search term anywhere it appears in the record.
• Document text- Search terms are searched within the articles’ text.
• Document title- The selected search terms are looked for in the title of the articles.

Additionally, you can filter by document type and publication date. Once you have set up your search, click the search button to get your search results.

Conclusion

Searching the ProQuest Historical Newspapers is a great resource for finding content on historical events. Check out the ProQuest Historical Newspapers guide if you want to learn more about searching these databases. If you have any questions while accessing or using library resources, you can reach out to one of our liaison librarians who are happy to assist you!

Ben Cushing is a Research and Instruction Librarian at The Catholic University of America University Libraries.

References

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Wall Street Journal. (n.d.). ProQuest. Retrieved February 27, 2026 from https://www.proquest.com/hnpwallstreetjournal/index?accountid=9940