Launched in late 2012, Newspapers.com, a website of Ancestry.com, makes searching and browsing historical newspapers fun with its slick user interface and the ability to easily click, save and share your newspaper finds. But does it have the newspaper coverage in the areas and time periods that interest you? Does it give you enough bang for your buck? Is it the best newspaper source for your subscription dollars, or are there other sources of historical newspapers that will serve you better?

User Interface and Navigation
The newspaper images at Newspapers.com load fairly fast, and the search options make it really easy to narrow a search to a particular subset of newspapers based on combination of title, location, and date from the left-hand column. Newspapers.com requires Flash for its newspaper viewer, so if you are having trouble viewing newspaper pages, then try uninstalling and reinstalling your Flash Player plug-in, or try using the free Google Chrome web browser.

If you like to "creep" (as my daughters would call it) on, or see what others are researching in your areas of interest, the right-hand column next to every newspaper page includes links to other people who are "interested in this paper"—in other words, people who have clipped or saved articles from that particular newspaper title (not necessarily the same newspaper date or article). You can also "watch" or "follow" a particular newspaper or person by selecting the "Follow" button on the paper's page or a person's profile page, or by checking "Watch" under "Settings" (the gears icon) when you save a clipping.

You will then be notified if Newspapers.com adds new pages for that newspaper title, or when someone clips an article from it.

Newspaper Coverage
As of February 2014, Newspapers.com has 2,201 different newspaper titles from across the United States, plus a few titles in Canada, England, Ireland, and Panama, adding up to a total of 58+ million newspaper pages. Start with the "All Newspapers" page (accessible even if you do not have a subscription), accessible via "Papers" on the top navigation bar. From there you can search via keyword for a particular title, or browse by location and/or time period to see what's available. This page is accessible without logging in so you can see what's available before deciding to plunk down money for a subscription.

My Clippings
Newspapers.com offers one feature not available from the other major online sources of historical newspapers -- the ability to easily "clip" an article or story, which can then be saved publicly, or privately to your own account. The clippings each include the name of the paper, the page and the date -- pretty much everything you need for a citation except the column number, but for that just click on the clipping to be taken back to the full page from which it was clipped. Clippings can also be shared via email or online and, when you share a clipping, others can see the image even if they don't subscribe to Newspapers.com. This allowed sharing of small amounts of content is more liberal than the stated terms of use at other popular commercial newspaper sites. See the Newspapers.com Terms of Use for more information. A fun way to explore the types of interesting content available in old newspapers is to explore the public clippings of other people researching in your areas of interest.

Save and Share
Anytime you come across an article you’d like to save or share, choose “Clip” at the top of the viewer window. Drag the edges of the box that appears around the item of interest, add a description if you desire (click "More" to add a longer description), and your clipping will be saved under “My Clippings.” The default setting for anything you clip is public, but you can also keep your clippings private by clicking on the little gears "options" icon before you save and checking "Private." If you are generally going to prefer to keep your clippings private, then go to "My Clippings" and select the gear icon to change the default for all new clippings to private. You will still be able to change the privacy and watch settings for an individual clippings when you create or edit them as well.

There are also a lot of options for sharing your cool clipping with friends or family under under “Share this clip,” including options for emailing it to someone, embedding it on a website, or sharing via social media (Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest). There's also a button in the top right-hand corner which allows you to save a particular newspaper page to a member tree on Ancestry.com. 

Search Tips for Locating Content on Newspapers.com
The basic keyword search available on the Newspapers.com home page helps you to cast a pretty wide net, covering names, locations and keywords. Selecting "Add More Info" (alternately called "Show Advanced" if you are anywhere other than the home page) allows you to specify a date range and/or a location for your search but, to be honest, this is generally easier to do after your initial search results come up via the "Narrow by Date" and "Narrow by Location" options in the left-hand panel. I find it interesting to begin my search broadly, especially when searching for a more unique surname, as it provides an idea where clusters of that name might exist across the U.S. If there are too many results to explore, I then typically narrow by both state and time period to restrict the results to something more manageable.

Once you have a search restricted to meet your needs, you can share the search using the "Save/Notify" button in the right-hand column. The benefit of this is that Newspapers.com will email you when new items are added to the collection that match your saved searches! You can find and edit searches you've saved on your profile page, accessible via the drop-down menu in the upper righthand corner of each page. As with clippings, saved searches are public by default, but when you edit a saved search you can select settings (the gears icon) and uncheck the "public" box to make it private or set the default for new saved searches to private by clicking the settings icon on your profile page and unchecking the box for "new saved searches are public."

It's not always easy to find content in online digitized newspapers because the OCR technology used to turn the digitized copy into text is not perfect. You often have to get creative by searching for partial names, combinations of names, alternate spellings or keywords, or even street addresses. For more ideas and suggestions, see 7 Tips for Searching Historical Newspapers Online.

More Options for Historical Newspapers Online
Chronicling America (free)
GenealogyBank (subscription)
NewspaperArchive (subscription)
Google News Archive (free)
ProQuest Historical Newspapers (free through subscribing libraries)
Historical Newspapers Online - A Worldwide List