Microfilm
Hundreds of Iowa newspaper titles from 1836 to the present are available on microfilm at the State Historical Society of Iowa Research Centers in Des Moines and Iowa City. They are also available through interlibrary loans.
You can explore the Iowa History Collections Catalog to determine which newspapers are available on microfilm at the research centers in Des Moines and Iowa City. These search tips can help you find newspapers more easily.
For the research center in Des Moines, you can also use these spreadsheets to browse newspapers by town or county. Within each town or county, newspapers are listed chronologically.
Online
Many Iowa newspapers are available online through the following resources:
- Iowa Digital Newspaper Project
The State Historical Society of Iowa has digitized more than 400,000 pages of historic Iowa newspapers through the National Digital Newspaper Program, which is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. These newspapers are freely available through the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America collection. - Advantage Archives
Many Iowa newspapers have been digitized from microfilm in the State Historical Society of Iowa’s collection and made available at no cost by Advantage Preservation. - Newspaper Archive
The State Historical Society of Iowa Research Centers in Des Moines and Iowa City offer complimentary access through this webpage to Iowa newspapers available on NewspaperArchive, an archive of millions of digitized newspaper pages from across the country.
Iowa Newspaper Preservation
For more than a century, the State Historical Society of Iowa has collected, preserved and provided access to a comprehensive collection of Iowa newspapers. To do so, the society depends on ongoing relationships with publishers, who create and own their newspapers’ intellectual property. Private donors and funding institutions who consider newspapers a valuable resource and fund expensive preservation efforts. Vendor partners who do the work to preserve and make newspapers available on microfilm and in digital formats online.
The society invites Iowans across the state to support our efforts to identify, support and preserve the state’s newspapers. If you know of an Iowa community newspaper that needs preservation or if you are leading a project, please let us know. If you would like to make a tax-deductible gift to support the society’s preservation work, please visit our donation page.