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Course & Subject Guides

History of the English Language - Greensburg Campus

This guide will assist students in Dr. Greenfield's History of the English Language (ENGLIT 1552) course in researching the development of their chosen words.

Burney Collection Newspapers

NOTE:  The British newspapers described on this tab are divided into two different products:  17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers and 19th Century British Library Newspapers.  These are the first two databases listed in the "Databases A-Z" list on the University Library System's (ULS) website.

What are the Burney Collection and British Library Newspapers?

The Burney Collection contains "the newspapers, pamphlets, and books gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) [and] represent[s] the largest and most comprehensive collection of early English news media. The present digital collection, [which] helps chart the development of the concept of 'news' and 'newspapers' and the 'free press', totals almost 1 million pages and contains approximately 1,270 titles."

Burney 17th and 18th

 To access 17th-18th Century Burney Collection, click on the image above.

"The 19th Century British Library Newspapers collection contains full runs of 48 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain. This new collection 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."

Burney 19th

To access 19th Century British Library Newspapers, click on the image above.

To access either of these databases from off-campus, follow the "Access Our Library Anywhere!" instructions to the left.

Do you have any tips for me?

Librarians always have search tips for databases! These databases are provided by the same company as ECCO, so many of the search tips are the same.  Please refer to the ECCO tab for more information.

So if I feel comfortable with ECCO, I should find many of the same options available to me in these databases?

Yes, for the most part.  However, these are newspapers, so some of the options are a little different.  You'll notice that you can sort your results by date ascending in this database as well.  In the results list, you will be given links that will take you to the article or to the full page on which the article appears.  This distinction will be important when you begin to cite your sources.

Refer to the results list tips and printing/emailing/saving tips on the ECCO tab.

Why don't these databases have cool acronyms like the others?

Sometimes acronyms just don't work out the way we'd like.