World Newspaper Archive collections: on trial

*The Library has now purchased access to African Newspapers, Series 1. See New! African Newspapers, Series 1 1800-1922*

Thanks to a request from the UncoverEd project team, I’m pleased to let you know that the Library currently has trial access to two digital newspaper collections, African Newspapers, Series 1 and South Asian Newspapers, from Readex. Both collections offer unique access to fully searchable collection of historical newspapers from Africa and South Asia.

You can access this digital resource via the E-resources trials page.
Access is available both on and off-campus.

Trial access ends 19th April 2019.

African Newspapers, Series 1

This groundbreaking online collection provides more than 60 searchable African newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Featuring English and foreign-language titles from Angola, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, African Newspapers, Series 1, offers unparalleled coverage of the issues and events that shaped the continent and its peoples between 1800 and 1922.  From repercussions of the Atlantic slave trade, life under colonial rule and the results of the Berlin Conference to the emergence of Black journalism, the Zulu Wars and the rejection of Western imperialism, these newspapers provide a wide range of viewpoints on diverse cultures.

Screenshot from front page of East African Standard, Mombasa Times and Uganda Argus (published as THE African Standard MOMBASA TIMES & UGANDA ARGUS), January 15, 1903.

South Asian Newspapers

This one-of-a-kind collection 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. This includes the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion; construction of railroads; effects of British Colonial rule; Hindu-Muslim conflicts; life on coffee, tea and rubber plantations; Morely-Minto Reforms; formation of the Indian National Congress; start of Mahatma Gandhi’s independence movement; economics, politics, the arts; and much more.

Screenshot of front page of Amrita Bazar Patrika, November 23, 1870.

Access both databases via e-resources trials.
Access is available both on and off-campus.
Access available until 19th April 2019.
Feedback welcome.

You can access all the newspaper and magazine digital archives already available at the Library via the Newspapers and Magazines list.

Access is only available to current students and staff at University of Edinburgh.

Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for School of Social and Political Science

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