We have all tried to click on an article, only to find out that it is only available to subscribers, or that we have already read 5 of 5 free articles this month. Would you like to access articles without running into paywalls? Whether you work at CCC or are a student, you can! Here’s how.
Instructions to Begin
Go to the list of CCC Library Databases. These are all the databases CCC pays for access to.
Scroll down to “By Subject: Academic Journals, Magazines and Newspapers”. Under this heading, click on Proquest Databases and Newspapers.
You may be asked to log in to access the resources. Put in your ID (for example, agarcia42) and password.
Now you will see a list of different news sources you can explore, such as American, Canadian, and international newspapers, as well as historical Chicago newspapers. For now, click on U.S. Newsstream (1980 - current). Click on the blue underlined words, not the checkbox or plus sign.
On this page, you have access to over 1,000 national, regional, and local newspapers going back to the 1960s. Choose one of the adventures below and follow the instructions.
First, follow the Instructions to Begin above.
Next, in the “enter search terms” box, write your topic using a few keywords, like “assault weapons ban”.
Now you can narrow down your search by adjusting the controls on the left. For example, you can choose to only read articles published since 2010, or look at audio and video journalism instead of written articles.
First, follow the Instructions to Begin above.
Next, click on Publications, the third tab from the left.
Under Publication Search, type the name of the publication (for example, Wall Street Journal) and press Enter.
Click on the news source you want in the search results. I’m going to click on the second result, Wall Street Journal (Online).
In the box that says “search within this publication”, search the title of the article you’re interested in.
When you see the article you want in the search results, click it to open it.
If you’d like to share the article with another CCC employee or student:
Right-click on the article in the search results.
Choose Copy Link Location.
Paste (by pressing CTRL+V) the link wherever you need it, like a Zoom chat or an email.
First, follow the Instructions to Begin above.
Next, click on Publications, the third tab from the left.
Under Publication Search, type Chicago Tribune and press Enter. (Or search whichever news source you want to read today.)
Look through the search results. There may be two different results for a print version and an online version. Click on the one you want.
The page will automatically show you the articles from today’s edition, but you can change it to whatever date you want to look at a past edition of the paper.
You can use the Publication Finder to access magazines like Wired, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and more! If you are not logged in already, you may get an error message. Just come back to this link and click on it again after logging in.
If you like to read the news, but find newspapers like the New York Times to be too difficult, here are some websites to try. Besides news articles for readers at different levels, they also offer vocabulary lists, news videos, news-based speed-reading exercises, and comprehension and analysis questions for you to answer.
www.newsela.com (You'll need to make a free student account. Every article is available to read at five different levels, so you can make sure it's not too hard and not too easy.)