Few patrons are aware that we have access to many Louisiana newspapers through our Newspapers section on our webpage. You can get access to this by going to Research and Learning and then going to Digital Library from the library webpage. This section helps you in finding not just Louisiana newspaper articles but national articles as well. The entire website is sponsored by the State Library of Louisiana.
You can start at the left menu with links for most of the Louisiana newspaper websites. The major newspapers are included like the Baton Rouge Advocate and Times Picayune. Smaller papers are included also like the Houma Courier. Over 50 newspaper sites are listed here. Most of the websites are very user friendly with colorful photographs.
Other online indexes are listed that are more specialized. The New Orleans Bee was a historic French language newspaper and the index covers 1827-1923. The Bayou State Periodical Index will help you find articles in Louisiana magazines and it covers the years 1985 to the present. Such titles as Louisiana Life and Louisiana Cultural Vistas are indexed.
The Louisiana Online Historical Newspapers Index is a collection of back issues of historic Louisiana newspapers compiled by the Library of Congress. Most of these newspapers cover the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Chronicling America is also sponsored by the Library of Congress and contains scanned images from newspapers some coming from Louisiana publications. There is also an index that covers Jennings newspapers and covers the years 1894-1929 and 1914-2014 with a slight overlap in the years.
There is a specialized Obituary Index that covers the Times Picayune, the Advocate (1952-1991) and Rapides Parish (1993-present). The State Library also has Time Picayune articles on microfilm that can be viewed there covering the years 1922-1944 and 1972-2008. Finally, out of state newspapers links are given for such major publications as the Dallas Morning News, Chicago Sun Times, and New York Times.
If you would like to conduct comprehensive newspaper research and have it all compiled for you in a number of useful links and indexes, our Newspaper section will be an invaluable aid.