One of our most frequently asked questions is “Can I search old Buffalo newspapers online?” The answer is, “It depends.” Some newspapers have been digitized at some websites, which we talk about below. But all of the major Buffalo newspapers starting with our first paper, the Buffalo Gazette, founded in 1811, are not online in any comprehensive or systematic way. We hope to make an announcement soon about a newspaper digitization plan.

Until then, there are multiple online newspaper sites with random chunks of this or that newspaper, so we decided to make our own search engine to make it easier to access them. We focused on sites likely to have Buffalo articles and sites indexed by Google.

When we had several that fit the bill, we set up a custom search engine called Buffalo Newspapers.

With this single search box, you can simultaneously drill into these newspaper sites and use all of the Google operators you’ve gotten used to, like quotation marks to find a phrase, or the –(minus symbol) to leave out a word. Four of the sites are free, but two have a paywall or require a paid membership. At the pay sites, you may get the first paragraph free, which will help you decide if it is worth purchasing the entire article.

 

What’s Under the Hood:

Name of Site	Comments	Coverage begins	Coverage ends	Fee or Free	Indexed by Google
Buffalo News	The Buffalo News does not permit Google to index its archives, but it has a reseller, Highbeam.com, who does	1998	present	$	Yes, through Highbeam.com
Chronicling America	This is where the Library of Congress is gradually digitizing the nation’s newspapers	Colonial Era	1922	Free	Yes
FultonHistory.com	Scanned microfilms from around upstate NY, with imperfect OCR[i]	1795	2007	Free	Yes
New York Times	The NYT used to pay attention to Buffalo. When you open a link from the NYT, look for the tiny link to download a PDF	1851	1980	Free	Yes
Newspapers.com	Operated by Ancestry.com, presently has 61 newspapers from around New York State	1797	1977	$	Yes
NYShistoricnewspapers.org	This is a collaborative effort to   host digitized newspapers from around New York State	Colonial Era	1922 in most cases	Free	Yes

[i] OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, the software that enables a computer to “read” printed pages and make them full-text searchable

If you like this search engine, we invite you to embed it at your blog or website. Please contact us in the Library to request the code: library@buffalohistory.org.

Cynthia Van Ness
Director of Library and Archives