Some of the newspapers we get are full-featured cover-to-cover archive newspaper databases that include photographs and graphics and that allow you to search for classified ads, display ads, and much more. Other databases are aggregator databases that don't include photographs, display ads, etc. This is a list of archive newspaper databases, but if you are just interested in the text you may want to search some of the other newspaper databases included in this guide on other tabs. Ethnic NewsWatch may be a good option.
The Importance of Metadata
Metadata is data about data, which in this context means that useful information about newspaper content is put in consistent fields that can be searched. The Seattle Times is a good example - its articles were either born digital or scanned and OCR'd so that they are searchable, and elements of each article have been assigned metadata, so they can be searched by title, etc. If you are interested in ads, photographs or other graphics it is far more difficult - individual issues are scanned so that information is available, but it is not very findable because you can only look at it page-by-page -- photographs, graphics, ads and display ads do not have searchable metadata attached to them.
information about Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
An example of how OCR can really go wrong...
More on microforms (this guide hasn't been updated in a bit, but should still be useful)
Some of the newspapers we get are full-featured cover-to-cover archive newspaper databases that include photographs and graphics and that allow you to search for classified ads, display ads, and much more. Other databases are aggregator databases that don't include photographs, display ads, etc.
If you use an image or video clip/still in your work, you will need to cite it (try to use the actual image and not a copy if possible). Citation requirements may vary by the style guide you are using. If you were using an image for non-scholarly work you might have to factor in copyright/intellectual property issues, but because you are doing this project for an academic assignment you should be covered by the fair use exemption, but you still need to provide attribution.