Frequently Asked Questions: Newspapers, Periodicals, Comic Books

Considered one of the largest collections of newspapers in the world, we certainly have a lot here at the Library of Congress, but not every newspaper.  Our collection includes current, retrospective and historic runs of newspapers and represents each state and territory, as well as nearly every country in the world.

The collection holds nearly a million reels of microfilm, covering both foreign and domestic titles. In some cases, we have original copies of older newspapers as well. Some of our bound volumes are kept in offsite storage, while U.S. newspapers between 1690 and 1827 and from the Civil War are kept in our vault on site. We also maintain collections of digitized newspapers, as well as subscribe to an array of full-text databases.

To find out if we have the newspaper you need, just ask us by submitting a question.

And just to give you an idea of the vast collection of newspapers, here are some numbers (as of Sept 2019):

• Newspapers on microfilm (786,955 reels)
• Rare newspaper volumes (4,338)
• 18th century newspaper issues (18,979 issues)
• Historic event newspaper issues (2,422)
• Bound volumes held in remote storage (37,954)
• Portfolios newspaper issues (approx. 50,000 issues)
• Loose newspapers (approx. 7.1 million issues)
• Electronic print newspapers (approx. 9000 issues)
• Chronicling America website for digitized newspapers (16 million pages)