Urban affairs & planning: News, other journalism, streaming video
Urban Affairs & Planning at Virginia Tech conducts basic and applied research on national and international development patterns, focusing on key forces shaping metropolitan growth such as demographics, environment, technology, design, and transportation.
Sometimes called the "first drafts of history," journalistic sources such as newspapers and broadcast transcripts are important as primary sources for historical research and cultural analysis. They also can be the best available sources for descriptions and interpretations of recent events, because it typically takes two years after an event for peer-reviewed publications about it to appear. Don't overlook interviews of scholars and other authorities in news stories nor commentaries by academics in editorial/opinion sections. Deadlines mean the news reporters cannot get "all the facts" right in a single story, so look for follow-up stories and for multiple, independent sources to validate claims. Note, too, that the convention that journalism is supposed to be objective, unbiased, and balanced is only about a century old, it is more deeply rooted in the US than elsewhere; and is contested as a professional and/or social value.
This guide identifies the VT Libraries' principal collections of recent and historical news sources, both from the US and abroad; general-purpose databases that provide significant news content alongside academic articles; directories of free online news archives; and streaming video collections, both documentary and dramatic.
Journalism collections, including historical news archives
Articles selected from American and international newspapers, magazines, and transcripts (even video clips) of news broadcasts, sometimes as far back to 1978. Complete "image editions" are available of more than 100 papers, generally beginning in 2018 or later. These are same-day, color facsimiles of the print editions, including ads, legal notices, letters, comics, and crossword puzzles.
We provide additional archival image editions of
The best source for news coverage from sources outside the US, and/or in languages other than English, Factiva provides full-text news articles and business/industry information from newswires, newspapers, business and industry magazines, transcripts of television and radio programs, financial reports, and photos from news services. Most content is plain HTML, without illustrations, though other formats are available for export. News source coverage can extend as far back as 1979-present; financial data 1960s-present. Factiva content is not available through Discovery Search.
Factiva provides full-text news articles and business information. From the Search tab, use the Free Text search box to explore an archive of over 50 years of news and other sources.
From the News Pages tab, you can browse current issues of major newspapers and business magazines from around the world.
From the Companies/Markets tab, you can research competitors, suppliers, customers, and partners through market data, interactive charts, financial statements, and more for individual companies or industries. Data includes current and historical pricing on a variety of financial instruments like stocks, funds, currencies, and market indexes.
Newspaper Source Plus indexes citations, abstracts, and full text from more than 860 newspapers. Full-text articles are available in PDF format.The database covers major newspapers and television and radio news transcripts. 1985-present.
This database indexes citations, abstracts, and some full text for journal and newspaper articles from historical and current, international and domestic newspaper databases on the ProQuest platform. Useful as a front end to searching specialized full-text news collections in plain text (EthnicNewsWatch, GenderWatch), historical newspaper archives in page-image (eg, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Defender, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, others), and archival collections of US and British popular and trade magazines. Dates of coverage vary by title.
Latin American News Digest aggregates and summarizes in English the news of the Latin American media, with links to the original online articles. Issues appear weekly, with the exception of July, Thanksgiving break and December. Material from these periods appears in expanded, subsequent issues. The Digest issue date represents the news aggregation period.
Contains general news sites (June 2014 onward) with a focus on stories of national interest for all audience levels. The collection contains born-digital publications and publications that were once only available in print and are now only available online. The General News on the Internet Web Archive is an ongoing collecting effort of the US Library of Congress. "Many, if not all, of the Web sites in the collection and elements incorporated into the Web sites (e.g., photographs, articles, graphical representations) are protected by copyright. The materials may also be subject to publicity rights, privacy rights, or other legal interests."
"Given the dynamic nature of the 24-hour news cycle of today, these archives are meant to capture as much of the news distribution as possible given current limitations in technology and resources. For most news-based sites, we use a hybrid approach of weekly captures of the websites, augmented with twice-daily capture of known RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication). "
Weekly political news magazine featuring in-depth reporting on public policy, politics, congressional legislation, and elections extending back to 1983, including: a complete wrap-up of news on Congress, the status of bills in play, behind-the-scenes maneuvering, committee and floor activity, debates, and all roll-call votes.
Begun in 1923 as a service providing background information and pro/con arguments for American editorial writers, CQ Researcher Plus Archive is a window on hot topics in public life across the 20th century as well as a tool to make sense of today's controversies. It can function as starting point for background information, search terms, and topics to use in searching archived journalistic sources. Language and viewpoints in archived reports are products of their time and culture; a browseable "issue tracker" allow you to connect historical and recent discussions without needing to know or use obscure and possibly offensive search terms.
Part of CQ Press Library collection of political, news, and reference works.
As chronicles of a global empire’s rise and transformation, British newspapers offer the most comprehensive (though not unbiased) coverage available in English to world events from the 18th century onward -- including of course events in the US. Cross-search the British papers among themselves or with selected 19th century US papers. You can focus your searches to news; editorial (called "leaders" in the UK) and commentary; people; advertisements; arts, sports and leisure; and business. Some publications still in business add content annually behind a "rolling wall" that limits availability to a fixed number of years before present.
Cover-to-cover facsimiles of 1,000+ US newspapers in PDF. Restrict searches to dates/eras, article types (news & opinion, election returns, letters, poetry/songs, legislative, prices, advertisements, matrimony & death notices), region/state, and newspaper name. Includes the digitized versions of the Early American Newspapers microforms collection, additional African American Newspapers 1827-1998 collection, Richmond Times Dispatch, 1903-86, additional Virginia papers, and the complete run of the Washington Evening Star, the most influential DC paper from the Civil War era into the 1960s.
Full page images from 270 newspapers published in 36 states, including rare and historically significant 19th-century titles that are full-text searchable. Individual pages or entire issues can be downloaded as PDFs. This archival collection offers insights into African-American history, culture, daily life, and attitudes and like many newspapers, provides articles on all subject areas
Associated Press Collections provide primary sources in journalism. The U.S. City Bureau collection has wire copy, correspondence, and newsletters from the post-WW2 period. The Washington, DC Bureau Collection has records covering presidents, elections, political events, and biographies for 1938-2009. You can visualize term frequencies.
Newspaper Archive provides page-image archives of newspapers is especially strong in coverage of suburban, small-city, and rural newspapers, with coverage extending from the colonial era to the present in some cases.
This database has very wide scope but its awkward interface lacks the powerful search tools and requires more manual work than newspaper archives from academic library vendors like Readex, Gale, and ProQuest. Do not confuse this package with the Access World News database from Newsbank, which focuses on news sources worldwide, mostly in plain text, from the past few decades.
Cover to cover coverage in full-page images. Cross-search all magazines in full text (including words in advertising) using the familiar EbscoHost search interface.
Architectural Digest Magazine Archive (1920-2011. ISSN: 2163-3819). Monthly international design magazine features beautiful photography and information on architecture and interior design, art and antiques, travel destinations, and extraordinary products.
Forbes Magazine Archive (1917-2000. ISSN: 0015-6914). Bi-weekly business magazine.
Life Magazine Archive (1936-2000. ISSN: 0024-3019). Complete run of the popular magazine that defined American photojournalism: national and world news, culture, lifestyle reporting, long feature articles, all heavily illustrated, including work by celebrated photographers.
National Review Archive (1955-present. ISSN: 0024-3019). Influential opinion magazine has been at the center of US conservative political and cultural discourse since the 1950s.
To restrict your search by publication, change the search field menu to sources (SO= ), and enter the name of the magazine. Clicking on the article title in the search results box may appear to produce nothing; select PDF Full Text option in a record to view that item. Browsing is difficult in the Ebsco platform. It is easier to search the library's journal-title database for the bold-faced title or ISSN in the list above, select the magazine archive version, then pick publication year and drill down to an issue's table of contents to pick the article. To browse directly from one article to another, use PDF link in the left sidebar to browse through an issue in five-page increments or to navigate to another issue.
Independent Voices provides alternative press newspapers and magazines, in image and PDF formats, from the last half of the 20th century.
Independent Voices is composed of seven series that align with the major social movements of the time.
The GI Underground Press Series was developed in collaboration with the GI Press Project. It is the most comprehensive collection of digitized GI underground newspapers and newsletters ever compiled. Adding to the value of the series is its placement in the context of the hundreds of other underground press publications published during the same period. GI underground publications could be found on military bases, in coffeehouses, and in other places where GI’s gathered in the U.S. and around the world in every branch of the military. The GI underground press covered many topics, including military indoctrination, seemingly arbitrary rules and regulations, racism, sexism, the bounds of power and authority, legitimacy of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, the military as an institution, and the definition of “enemy.” The content was creative and diverse. In addition to news articles and editorials, publications included fiction, poetry, cartoons, letters to the editor, and more.
Throughout the twentieth century, literary magazines were a primary means for sharing new writing and forming literary communities. “Little magazines,” as they are often called, were usually noncommercial in nature and often committed to certain literary ideals. Nearly every literary movement of the 1950s to 1980s began or evolved in the pages of these magazines. Focusing primarily on poetry but also including fiction and criticism, this collection reflects many often-overlapping groups and communities, including writers and editors affiliated with the Beat Generation, the Black Arts Movement, Black Mountain, the Deep Image movement, the New York School, San Francisco Renaissance, Surrealism, visual and concrete poetries, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and the Kootenay School of Writing.
Underground, alternative, and literary newspapers and magazines from the fifties through the eighties were everywhere. They were in urban, suburban, rural, ghetto, barrio, tribal, and other communities in every U.S. state and in countries around the world. Reveal Digital’s Independent Voices is the most extensive digital collection of these historic publications that has ever been conceptualized and created. The Campus Underground series includes publications that originated from college and university campuses and surrounding communities. Whether laid out in traditional black and white straight columns or full-color psychedelic, the publications in this collection provide a vivid mosaic of the times.
Two of Independent Voices most important series are the Feminist Periodicals and LGBT Periodicals. Sourced largely from Duke University’s Sallie Bingham Center and Northwestern University’s Deering Library, these closely related series include cover-to-cover complete runs of over 120 women’s papers. These publications sparked the women’s movement in the fifties and early sixties and propelled the second wave of feminism in the late sixties and early seventies. Groups represented by these publications include the Redstockings, New York Radical Women, Daughters of Bilitis, Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, The Furies, Third World Women’s Alliance and many others.
The archetype of the Sunday morning TV news “talking heads” show in streaming video with full transcriptions, the Meet the Press archive comprises thousands of interviews, panels, and debates about people and topics in the news — more than 1,500 hours. Alexander Street's search interface permits you to make clips and playlists for use in presentations.
The C-SPAN Video Library records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Programs are indexed by subject, speaker names, titles, affiliations, sponsors, committees, categories, formats, policy groups, keywords, and location. The congressional sessions and committee hearings are indexed by person with full-text. 1987-present.
The Archives records all three C-SPAN networks seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Programs are extensively indexed making the database of C-SPAN programming an unparalleled chronological resource. Programs are indexed by subject, speaker names, titles, affiliations, sponsors, committees, categories, formats, policy groups, keywords, and location. The congressional sessions and committee hearings are indexed by person with full-text. The video collection can be searched through the online Video Library.
All C-SPAN programs since 1987 are digital and can be viewed online for free. Duplicate copies of programs that have aired since 1987 can be obtained and used for education, research, review or home viewing purposes. Proceeds from the sale of these programs help support the operation of the Archives. Some programs are not copyright cleared for sale.
The Archives began within the Purdue University School of Liberal Arts in 1987. In July 1998, C-SPAN assumed responsibility for the archival operations and the facilities were moved from the Purdue University campus to the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, Indiana. The indexing, abstracting, and cataloging of C-SPAN programs is the responsibility of the C-SPAN Archives staff.
By tracking millions of stories published online, Media Cloud's suite of tools allows researchers to track how stories and ideas spread through media. The tools are designed to aggregate, analyze, deliver and visualize information, answering complex quantitative and qualitative questions about the content of online media. Sign up for free personal account to use all the features. Media Cloud is a joint project by the MIT Center for Civic Media and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
"GDELT Project is an open platform for research and analysis of global society" through mining news media from around the world, in 100 languages, since 1979. The "big data" project offers a free cloud-based analysis service, Google BigQuery, and -- for advanced users -- dataset downloads.
Databases offering significant news content (among other genres)
Gale General OneFile indexes citations and full text from magazines, newspapers, news program transcripts, travel guides, and reference works. 1980-present.
Academic Search Complete indexes citations, abstracts, and full text from journal articles, books, reports, and conference proceedings in all subject disciplines. Full text provided in PDF and HTML. Searchable cited references are provided for nearly 1,000 journals. Searches can be limited to peer reviewed sources. Indexing 1887-present, most full-text content 1980s-present.
ABI/Inform indexes citations, abstracts, and full text news articles, market and SWOT analyses, industry reports, country reports, downloadable data sets, dissertations, business cases, working papers, annual reports from North American companies, and company profiles and histories. You can limit searches to peer-reviewed journals. Full text provided in HTML and PDF. 1971-present.
MasterFILE Premier indexes citations, abstracts, and full-text articles, books and reference works (including the World Almanac, American Heritage Dictionary, and Book of Facts), primary source documents, photos, maps, flags, biographies, book reviews from Magill Book Reviews, and news transcripts. Full text available in HTML, PDF, and some scanned image formats. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources.
MasterFILE Premier contains full text for nearly 1,700 periodicals covering general reference, business, health, education, general science, multicultural issues and much more. This database also contains full text for nearly 500 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an Image Collection of over 502,000 photos, maps & flags. MasterFILE Premier offers PDF backfiles (as far back as 1975) for key publications including American Libraries, Foreign Affairs, History Today, Judaism, Library Journal, National Review, Saturday Evening Post, etc.
Lengthy list of online newspaper archive portals in the US (including many -- but not all -- state-level projects) and abroad. Indexes online may help you locate materials in microfilm. "Morgues" are the clipping (or "vertical") files maintained in particular newspapers. From the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room at the Library of Congress.
ICON directory "highlights and links to past, present, and prospective digitization projects of historic newspapers" from around the world, both free and proprietary, in various languages. Arranged by country, then state/province. Links to fee-based resources will not work: use the VT journal-title finder to connect to that Tech subscribes to. From the Center for Research Libraries.
Streaming media (film, broadcast, internet)
Broad-based video collections
This list highlights streaming sources that provide content most directly related to historical and social science inquiry. It is not an exhaustive directory to all our library's video providers.
Academic Video Online provides 70,000 streaming videos: documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels, arthouse movies, TV programs, and more. Public performance rights are included for all films except Film Platform content. AVON builds on our former Alexander Street streaming video collection, including highlights named below. Two search interfaces:
Engineering Case Studies Online. Documentaries, accident reports, experiments, visualizations, case studies, lectures and interviews from leading engineering institutions
(Alexander Street Press’s text-centered primary source databases (Oral History Online and Women & Social Movements) are not part of AVON/Alexander Street video collections.
Kanopy provides hundreds of streaming videos in a wide variety of subjects. For videos outside our collection, you'll be presented a form to request they be added.
Artfilms Digital provides streaming videos in the humanities and performing arts, art and architecture, and education, including documentaries and feature films.
Non-profit library of millions of free digitized books, movies, newspapers, and broadcasts, software, music, websites, and more (even political advertising). Notable features include:
Wayback Machine preserves multiple historical versions of websites, with varying degrees of effective linking
Open Library a collection of in-copyright book scans that can be "borrowed" for limited periods. (Tech is not affiliated with IA: your ability to access these books is equal to anyone on the internet anywhere. )
Specialized media collections
Though covering many things, events, and people, these collections are curated within boundaries such as topic or creator.
Socialism on Film provides streaming video from the communist world reveals war, history, current affairs, culture, and society from the 20th century and countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, much of Eastern Europe, the GDR, Britain, and Cuba.
records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Programs are indexed by subject, speaker names, titles, affiliations, sponsors, committees, categories, formats, policy groups, keywords, and location. The congressional sessions and committee hearings are indexed by person with full-text. 1987-present.
AAPB is a collection of 40,000 hours of public radio and television broadcasts. Alongside significant national programs, APB offers mostly of regional and local programs that document American communities since the mid-20th century: local news and public affairs programs, local history productions that document the heritage of local communities, and programs dealing with education, environmental issues, music, art, literature, dance, poetry, religion, and even film-making on a local level. Searchable and browseable by topic and participating broadcaster
The Scripps Library, through cooperation with various presidential libraries, has been collecting some of the most important presidential speeches in American history. These speeches all have transcripts, and some are available in their entirety in audio or video. 1789-present.
Collection of several hundred streaming videos digitized from PBS documentaries that were originally distributed in videotape -- ie, most of the programs date from the 1990s. The collection covers a broad range of disciplines in the humanities, arts, social sciences and sciences, but it's particularly strong in American history and American studies. Server is at UVA.
You can link directly to the individual videos in the collection using the URL syntax described in the examples below. The normal bitrate videos are encoded at 300 kbps and may be accessed from anywhere on the Internet. The high bitrate movies are encoded at 800 kbps and are only accessible on-ground at UVa and from on-campus locations of some other VIVA members with high speed network connections to Charlottesville via the National Lambda Rail or Internet2 (Virginia Tech's campus has access to this network).
Standard video bitrate URL example
https://pbsvid.itc.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/secure/viva-pbs?pbs_amx025-1&N
High video bitrate URL example
https://pbsvid.itc.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/secure/viva-pbs?pbs_amx025-1&H
Standard video bitrate, start 5 minutes into the movie URL example
https://pbsvid.itc.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/secure/viva-pbs?pbs_amx025-1&N&00:05:00:00
High video bitrate, start 5 minutes into the movie, end at 6 minutes URL example
https://pbsvid.itc.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/secure/viva-pbs?pbs_amx025-1&H&00:05:00:00&00:06:00:00
Articles selected from American and international newspapers, magazines, and transcripts (even video clips) of news broadcasts, sometimes as far back to 1978. Complete "image editions" are available of more than 100 papers, generally beginning in 2018 or later. These are same-day, color facsimiles of the print editions, including ads, legal notices, letters, comics, and crossword puzzles.
We provide additional archival image editions of