Extended Chat and Other Ways We Can Help

All of our lives have been turned upside down in the past month as we try to figure out the best way to get through this pandemic. That includes the librarians here at LC, who are working from home, as many of you probably are. So what does that mean for the world of newspapers and comic books?

The librarians from the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room are still here to answer your questions! While our reading room is closed for the COVID-19 pandemic, we are extending our chat services. You can now chat with us live Monday through Friday from 12pm to 4pm.  We can answer your questions about our collections and do our best to get you connected to the documents you need.

You can also send us emails through our Ask-A-Librarian form any time of day, any day of the week. Finally, you can always give us a call and leave a message with an email address where we can reach you: 202-707-5690.

All of our freely available, digitized newspaper collections are still available from our website for you to look at. That includes our website Chronicling America,* but it also includes the new Frederick Douglass Newspapers, the Stars and Stripes from World War I, the Japanese American Internment Camp Newspapers, and more!

We also have a lot of excellent research databases that we usually make available in our reading room. Since the Library is still closed to the public, however, we know that you can’t reach them. Fortunately, we’ve been able to get the librarians connected at home, so we can still help you to find things that are available there too! For example, we have access to America’s Historical Newspapers, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, NewspaperARCHIVE, and Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels. You can take a look at our databases and then let us know if you have questions! We even have a list of our reading room favorites that you can look through!

You can use the E-Journals link on our E-Resources page to search for the title of a magazine or newspaper to see if we have any of it available through a database. If you see that we have access to something that you are interested in, send us a message!

We won’t have access to our physical materials for quite a while, but you can still take a look at what we have through our online catalog. The catalog will tell you what years we have of magazines, newspapers, and comic books!

So don’t put off that research project just because you are at home. Use our resources for inspiration! And let us know if you need our help. We’re still here for you!

* The Chronicling America historic newspapers online collection is a product of the National Digital Newspaper Program and jointly sponsored by the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities.