Washington State Library's newspaper collection includes current issues on paper and historic newspapers on microfilm. We subscribe to about 125 daily and weekly newspapers throughout Washington, plus a few out-of-state papers. The microfilm collection consists of over 40,000 reels of newspapers dating from the 1850s to the present.
What Papers Do We Have?
Search our online catalog to find out which papers we have and for what years. You can limit your search to the Washington Newspapers collection, which allows you to search by City, County, Title, Subject, or Keywords. Choosing the Washington Newspapers collection also provides access to an interactive map of our state that allows you to pick a county and see a list of all the papers we have for that county.
Find out more about our microfilm collection, including how to access it and where to purchase film yourself, by clicking here.
Historic Newspapers Online
Washington State Library has created an online collection of full-text searchable newspapers beginning in 1852, which covers Washington's territorial and early statehood periods. View Historic Newspapers
Current Washington Newspapers
Click here for a directory of links to the websites of current Washington newspapers.
Online newspaper indexes (free of charge):
PROQUEST - Database of journals & newspapers, many full-text. Strengths in business & news coverage.
Washington State Library’s Select Index to the The Olympian and other regional publications
Produced by Washington State Library, this index contains citations to articles in The Olympian (Olympia, Washington) and other Washington state newspapers. Dates covered are from 1993 to the present. Current Olympian issues are indexed within 48 hours of publication.
Other online indexes to historic Pacific Northwest newspapers:
University of Washington – Pacific Northwest Regional Newspapers and Periodical Index
University of Washington Libraries’ Pacific Northwest Regional Newspaper and Periodical Index (Regional Index) is an electronic database containing citations from newspaper and periodical articles dealing with the Pacific Northwest. The Regional Index online contains citations for articles dealing with the Pacific Northwest published since January 1, 1997, in the Seattle Weekly, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Daily of the University of Washington.
Washington State University - Pacific Northwest Newspaper Clippings Collection
Washington State University’s Pacific Northwest Newspaper Clippings Collection is a collection of articles taken from newspapers published in the Pacific Northwest from about 1900 to about 1942. A selected set of approximately 10,000 images from the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Clippings Collection has been digitized and described in metadata for this online collection.
Oregon State Library – Oregon Index The Web-accessible Oregon Index is a selective index to Oregon newspapers and to Oregon items in other select publications. The index is a voluntary operation, maintained by indexers at the Oregon State Library and other libraries across Oregon. The Oregon Index database is divided into two files, a current file covering 1995 through current date and a backfile covering 1985-1994.
