If you ever have ever used our Guide to Compiling a Legislative History, you’ll know that it goes over all the major resources the State Library has, e.g. Acts and Resolves, Bills, House and Senate Journals, etc.

If you scroll down a little farther in the guide, you’ll find information on accessing the State Library’s collection of Boston newspapers, like the Globe:

Old newspaper articles can be especially helpful if you are researching historic legislation. Understanding the context of the law, e.g., contemporary events may provide insight into the legislative intent. While the State Library has collections of microfilmed newspapers, you can only access those if you are onsite at the library. Additionally, microfilm can be finicky, especially if you aren’t familiar with using it – and you can forget about key word searching!

Thankfully, the State Library also subscribes to the Northeast Collection of Newspapers.com. The Northeast Collection contains local newspapers from all over New England and portions of the Mid-Atlantic, with some of these papers dating back to the end of the 17th century.

You can search by newspaper, region, date, as well as keyword. The database also provides helpful tutorials for effective searching.

If you have a State Library card you can access these newspapers from anywhere. To access the database, visit our homepage and select the tile that says Search the State Library’s Databases.

This will take you to the following landing page:

Tip: you might need to scroll down a bit before the Additional Resources section becomes visible.

From the drop-down, select Newspapers.com – Northeast.

If you run into any issues accessing the database, please reach out to the State Library’s Reference Department (Reference.Department@mass.gov). Our librarians will be happy to help!

Maryellen Larkin Government Documents Reference Librarian