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CSPT500 / POLI 433 Politics of Colonialism

Local history resources (and more) in support of POLI 433

Historic Newspaper Tips

A few tips to get you started: 

  • Search newspapers using proper nouns for best results: names and places work better than themes and ideas.  How would your theme or idea be represented as facts in a newspaper?  What events would exemplify your theme? 
  • If you can find dates or date ranges (using secondary sources), your newspaper searching and browsing will be much easier.  In fact, the more pre-research you can do, the better. 
  • Consider the stakeholders in the events you're researching.  Historic newspapers rarely represent minority views. 
  • Want feelings or opinions? Look for editorials and letters to the editor. 
  • Pay attention to advertisements, classifieds, and business and shipping sections, not just news.  Many newspapers even had legal sections documenting business sales, execution of wills, real estate transactins and more.   

British Columbia newspapers - Online

BC Newspapers - Microforms

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