Library & Cultural Services: Psychosocial & Psychoanalytic Studies: News. Magazines. Essays & Blogs

News

The library offers a wide range of news & broadcast sources, as well as popular media sources like magazines. Coverage spans current and historical periods, and these resources present many opportunities for psychosocial investigation of individuals & groups, events, movements, and phenomena of interest to researchers. Consult the list below for the major resources available through the Library:

Factiva
Factiva is the Library's replacement for Nexis, and similarly offers full text access to thousands of newspapers from around the world, in a variety of languages. It includes many key national newspapers of record, as well as more local or regional newspapers. Additional content comes from Web newspapers, news wires, and business information sources.
Pressreader
PressReader has the largest selection of newspapers and magazines from over 120 countries in over 60 languages. That’s 7,000 trusted publications on a single platform. And readers can instantly translate articles in up to 21 languages.
Select "sign in" via "Library or Group". Search for University of Essex. Sign in using "OpenID Connect" and select University of Essex.
Box of Broadcasts (BoB)
Box of Broadcasts (BoB) is an off-air recording and media archive service. It allows you to record TV and radio programmes scheduled to be broadcast over the next seven days as well as retrieving programmes from the last seven days, and from the archive (back to around 2007 for 9 key channels).
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For students undertaking research of a more historical nature, or requiring exact digital reproductions of the original print newspapers, there are two major databases available: Gale Primary Sources and Proquest Historical Newspapers. Note that some newspaper titles on these databases offer content up until just a few years before present, so may also be used for contemporary research. The Gale and Proquest platforms also offer other primary source collections that may also be of interest to you. You can access them from the links below:

Gale Primary Sources
Gale Primary Sources provides access to a range of collections and newspaper archives. These databases include the Archives of Sexuality and Gender; British Library Newspapers; Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920; 17th and 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection; and more.
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Proquest Historical Newspapers
Digital reproductions of the original newspapers, which include: Black historical newspapers, LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Observer, Le Monde, Hindustan Times, South China Morning Post
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You can see a more extensive list of our newspaper resources on the Library's e-resources webpage

There are also, of course, numerous free news sites, including the BBC and Guardian Society pages among others. Many are free to search, but may charge for accessing content.

A useful portal to newspaper and broadcasting websites around the world is provided by ABYZ News

If you are interested in learning more about news and media, come along to the next Library workshop on this area of research.

Magazines

Ebony magazine archive
Ebony has been a leading African-American magazine since publication commenced in 1945. It focuses on news & stories important to the Black community in the US.
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GQ Magazine Archive
One of the longest-running and most influential men's magazines, GQ expanded its initial focus on fashion to cover other subjects. The digital archive from 1931- onwards provides textual & photographic insight into the history of fashion, popular culture, masculinity, and society. Provides an interesting contrast to Vogue Magazine Archive, which is also available through the Proquest platform
Internet Archive Magazine Rack
Huge collection of free digitised magazines. Many on computing & gaming, but also covering hobbies, popular culture, women's magazines, etc.

LGBT magazine archive
Archival runs of 27 of the most influential, longest-running serial publications covering LGBT interests. In addition to LGBT/gender/sexuality studies, this material serves disciplines such as sociology, political science, psychology, health, and the arts. Publications may contain explicit content.
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Pressreader
PressReader has the largest selection of newspapers and magazines from over 120 countries in over 60 languages. That’s 7,000 trusted publications on a single platform. And readers can instantly translate articles in up to 21 languages.
Select "sign in" via "Library or Group". Search for University of Essex. Sign in using "OpenID Connect" and select University of Essex.

US Women's & Girls' Magazines Archive
Snapshot of magazine websites from 2017 onwards

Vogue archive
A searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution colour page images. Pages, advertisements, covers and fold-outs are included, with rich indexing enabling researchers to find images by garment type, designer and brand names.
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Women's magazine archive
An archive of the backfiles of leading women's interest consumer magazines, from the late-19th century through to 2005. Issues are scanned in high-resolution colour, with non-article items such as advertisements included, and feature detailed article-level indexing.
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Essays. Blogs

Public Seminar
An independent project of The New School (New York), Public Seminar aims to inform debate about the pressing issues of our times. Essays cover a wide range of topics in the social sciences and arts & humanities