Digitized historical newspaper databases offer a valuable research tool. A rapidly expanding set of studies use these databases to address a wide range of topics. We review this literature and provide a toolkit for researchers interested in working with historical newspaper data. We provide a brief description of the evolution of historical newspapers, focusing on aspects that are likely to have implications for the design of empirical studies. We then review the main databases in use. We also discuss some key challenges in using these data, most importantly the fact that even the most extensive datasets contain only a selected sample of the universe of historical newspaper articles. We offer tools for evaluating the comprehensiveness of available newspaper datasets, show how to assess potential identification concerns, and suggest some solutions.

数字化历史报纸数据库提供了宝贵的研究工具。一系列迅速扩大的研究使用这些数据库来解决广泛的主题。我们回顾了这些文献，并为有兴趣处理历史报纸数据的研究人员提供了一个工具包。我们简要描述了历史报纸的演变，重点关注可能对实证研究设计产生影响的方面。然后我们回顾正在使用的主要数据库。我们还讨论了使用这些数据的一些关键挑战，最重要的是，即使是最广泛的数据集也仅包含历史报纸文章的精选样本。我们提供用于评估可用报纸数据集的全面性的工具，展示如何评估潜在的识别问题，并提出一些解决方案。