Digital access to historical newspapers is always in high demand from genealogists and other researchers. Recollection Wisconsin harvests a handful of historical newspaper collections (see list below). However, due to lack of centralized full-text searching and other technical limitations, we don’t actively work to digitize or support access to newspaper content. Fortunately, there are many other ways to access historical Wisconsin newspapers online.
Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers
The Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers, a service of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, is freely available to Wisconsin residents through BadgerLink. Almost 600,000 pages from 40 different titles in 26 Wisconsin communities, scanned from microfilm by Wisconsin Historical Society, were contributed to the Archive by various Wisconsin libraries between 2015 and 2022. Anyone with a Wisconsin library card can explore these historical newspapers by title, city, county or date, as well as more than 250 daily and weekly Wisconsin newspapers from 2005 to 90 days ago.
Chronicling America
In 2015 the Wisconsin Historical Society joined the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC) to provide access to historically significant historically significant community newspapers from across the United States. More than 300,000 pages from Wisconsin newspapers are freely available and searchable on the Chronicling America website.
Other access points
Even more digitized historical newspapers are available online through a variety of other sources. The Wisconsin Historical Society maintains a comprehensive map of newspapers available online across the state (scroll to bottom of the page). The genealogy blog Ancestor Hunt also offers an extensive list of digitized newspapers in Wisconsin.
Newspaper collections harvested by Recollection Wisconsin
A few newspaper titles can be found through the Recollection Wisconsin portal, primarily student publications from colleges and universities:
- Brandon Times, Brandon Public Library
- Carroll Echo and other titles, Carroll University (Waukesha)
- Delavan Republican, Aram Public Library
- Green Lake County Reporter and Green Lake Spectator, Caestecker Public Library
- Lumen, Viterbo University (La Crosse)
- Marquette Tribune, Marquette University (Milwaukee)
- Pionier Presse, German newspaper published in Sauk City
- The Racquet, UW-La Crosse
- The Ranger News, UW-Parkside (Kenosha)
- Reform, Norwegian newspaper published in Eau Claire
- The Spectator, UW-Eau Claire
- UWM Post, UW-Milwaukee
- Wisconsin Labor Advocate, UW-La Crosse
- Wisconsin Times, Wisconsin School for the Deaf (Delavan)
