UK Historical Newspapers
Court cases and commentary were often reported in newspapers of the time. The resources below contain digitised copies historical newspapers.
- British Newspapers 1600-1950This site allows users to cross-search Gale's historic British Newspaper collections from a single interface. The Library has access to 17th-18th Century Burney Collection; 19th Century British Library Newspapers Parts I - II; British Newspapers Part III (1780-1950), national and regional papers from the British Isles, newsbooks and ephemera.
- 17th-18th Century Burney Collection NewspapersThe Burney Collection offers unique insights into two centuries of history through access to over 1,270 newsbooks, newspapers, pamphlets and a variety of other news materials published in England, Ireland and Scotland, plus papers from British colonies in Asia and the Americas.
- British Library NewspapersThe British Library Newspapers collection, parts I and II contains newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain. It includes national and regional newspapers, as well as those from both established country or university towns and the new industrial powerhouses of the manufacturing Midlands, as well as Scotland, Ireland and Wales. British Newspapers parts III and IV supplement these collections with additional British regional newspapers, taking the coverage back to 1732 and forward to 1950.
- Gale Primary SourcesThe Gale Primary Sources (formerly titled Artemis) research platform allows users to cross-search Gale's digital archive collections. The platform features Subject Indexing to aid content discovery across collections, Term Frequency which can suggest the importance of particular concepts during given periods, and Term Clusters which displays terms that commonly occur in relation to a search term.
- Times Digital ArchiveThe Times Digital Archive provides cover-to-cover page images and full-text searching of this important publication, coverage commences with the first issue published 1785.
Australian Historical Newspapers
Newspapers are sometimes the only publicly available record of a court case, especially for cases heard in the lower courts such as the Magistrates and County Court, or cases tried by a jury in any court.
Source: State Library of Victoria
The resources below provide access to historical national, regional and local newspapers.
- Trove Digitised Newspapers and moreTrove provides access to over 12.5 million pages from over 680 Australian newspapers. Newly digitised articles are added daily. Includes newspapers from each state and territory and from the earliest published newspaper in 1803, to the mid-20th century, including some community language newspapers.
Newspaper Research Guides
UK Historical Journals and Indexes
Journals may contain reports or commentary on legal issues. Some sources are listed below.
- 19th Century UK Periodicals19th Century UK Periodicals is a database using content from the British Library, the National Library of Scotland,the National Library of Australia, and many other sources, to make available digitised versions of key 19th Century UK Periodicals. By making this collection of 19th Century periodicals available and turning it into a high-resolution digital format with searchable images, this database presents online access to a key set of primary sources for the study of 19th century history.
- Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective : 1908-1981This retrospective database indexes over 750 legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Annual surveys of the laws of a jurisdiction, annual surveys of the federal courts, yearbooks, annual institutes, and annual reviews of the work in a given field or on a given topic are also be covered.
- HeinOnlineHeinOnline is Hein’s premier online research product with millions of pages of legal history available in an online, fully-searchable, image-based format. The collection features legal classics from the 16th to the 20th centuries in addition to its vast collection of current day law journals. Each collection can be searched separately, or cross-searched from the HeinOnline homepage.
- British PeriodicalsBritish Periodicals offers facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries. Collection I consists of more than 160 journals that comprise the ProQuest/UMI microfilm collection "Early British Periodicals". Collection II consists of more than 300 journals from the ProQuest/UMI microfilm collections "English Literary Periodicals" and "British Periodicals in the Creative Arts" together with additional titles.
- Wellesley Index to Victorian PeriodicalsThe vast majority of articles written for Victorian periodicals were published anonymously, or under pseudonyms. The Wellesley Index identifies the authors of articles within 45 major Victorian periodicals, and provides a bibliography for each contributor. It incorporates the Curran Index of corrections and additions to the original index.
Australian Historical Journals
Indexes can be useful to trace historical journal articles.
Sources of historical Australian journals include:
- Current Australian and New Zealand legal literature indexCall Number: K 28 CURRcovers the period 1973 to 1987
- AGIS Plus Text (Informit)AGIS Plus Text covers all aspects of law and is produced by the AGIS Section of the Lionel Murphy Library, Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department in Canberra. It covers the period 1999 to present for FullText and from 1975 to present for Index
- APAIS - Australian Public Affairs Information Service (Informit)APAIS the Australian Public Affairs Information Service covers social sciences and humanities, including history, economics, politics, current affairs and culture and is produced by the National Library of Australia.
- HeinOnlineHeinOnline is Hein’s premier online research product with millions of pages of legal history available in an online, fully-searchable, image-based format. The collection features legal classics from the 16th to the 20th centuries in addition to its vast collection of current day law journals. Each collection can be searched separately, or cross-searched from the HeinOnline homepage.
Finding Journal Articles
Indexes can be used to trace historical journal articles. Several relevant indexing databases are available:
- Eight Centuries19th Century Masterfile was launched in 1999 as "Poole's Plus," but has now grown to include over seventy contemporary indexes to English-language publishing prior to 1930. This combination of indexes covers periodicals, newspapers, books, patents, image archives, US and UK government documents, and more. It offers 'omni-disciplinary' coverage of materials in the humanities and social sciences, engineering, history of science, law, economics, religion, psychology, visual arts, music, and the physical sciences. In January 2020 the resource changed its name to "Eight Centuries". The new name reflects the ever-widening scope of the product: 8C contains material dating from the 12th to 20th centuries.
- Index to Legal Periodicals & Books FullIndex to Legal Periodicals and Books Full Text™ is a resource for attorneys, educators, business people, law librarians, students, paralegals and others involved with the law, providing complete coverage of the most important English language legal information, with international coverage of scholarly articles, symposia, jurisdictional surveys, court decisions, legislation, books, book reviews and more. Full text is available for over 400 periodicals, many of them peer-reviewed, as far back as 1994.
- Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective : 1908-1981This retrospective database indexes over 750 legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Annual surveys of the laws of a jurisdiction, annual surveys of the federal courts, yearbooks, annual institutes, and annual reviews of the work in a given field or on a given topic are also be covered.
- Gale OneFile: LegalTracLegalTrac provides indexing for major law reviews, legal newspapers, bar association journals and international legal journals. Each title included in LegalTrac is selected on the basis of criteria provided by a special advisory committee of the American Association of Law Libraries. LegalTrac also contains law-related articles from business and general interest titles.
- Westlaw (Thomson Reuters)Westlaw (previously known as Westlaw International and Westlaw Next), contains an extensive collection of U.S. state and federal materials, and selected international content from other jurisdictions including Canada, European Union, Hong Kong, Korea, United Kingdom, and more.