Current and back issues of many newspapers are held in Storage. The PJRC maintains a list of these newspapers and can retrieve material for consultation in our library on the 3rd floor of Robarts Library.
Other current newspapers can be read online by accessing the Library's subscriptions to the following databases:
- Russian Central Newspapers (UDB-COM)
- Baltics, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine Newspapers (UDB-EUR)
- Central Asia and Caucasus Newspapers (UDB--CAC)
For access to print back issues in Storage, please contact the Petro Jacyk Central & East European Resource Centre (PJRC) (3rd floor, Robarts Library) at 416-978-1288.
For information about the University of Toronto Library's holdings of historical newspapers from Central and Eastern Europe, see the guide Newspapers from Central and Eastern Europe in the University of Toronto Library (2008). Additionally, many Austrian Galician newspapers in Ukrainian, Carpatho-Rusyn, Hungarian, and German are listed in the guide to the Peter Jacyk Collection of Ukrainian Serials (1983), and in the updated and greatly expanded guide Newspapers and Journals from Western Ruthenian-Ukrainian Lands, 1848-1944, by Nadia Zavorotna (Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto, 2023) available in print in the PJRC.
The University of Toronto Libraries offers online access to a number of newspaper digital archives from Russia, the Soviet Union, and Central Asia, among them:
- Gudok (Moscow, 1918-present)
- Izvestiia (Moscow, 1917-present)
- Kavkaz (Tbilisi, 1846-1918)
- Literaturnaia gazeta (Moscow, 1929-present)
- Pravda (St. Petersburg, 1912-present)
- Moscow News (1930-2014)
- Nedelia (Moscow, 1960-1999)
- Novoe Russkoe Slovo (New York, 1917-2010)
- Slovo Kyrgystana and predecessor titles (Bishkek, 1925-2020)
- Sovetskaia Kultura Digital Archive (1929-present)
The Center for Research Libraries (CRL), in partnership with the vendor East View Information Services (EVIS), has made many historical newspapers available online to its members. This includes the Imperial Russian Newspapers collection chronicles 189 years of Russian history: from Peter the Great’s founding of the Russian empire, through the empire’s expansion during Catherine the Great, the abolishment of serfdom by Alexander II, the tumultuous years of Nicholas II, and everything in between.
English-language news digests include: Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports (1941-1996), and the Current Digest of the Soviet, Post-Soviet and Russian Press (1949-present).
The late and post-Soviet periods can be researched through two CRL-EVIS initiatives: Post-Perestroika Newspapers, 1984-2022 and Local and Independent Ukrainian Newspapers, 1989-2001.
The East Coast Consortium of Slavic Library Collections, of which the University of Toronto is a member, maintains a country-by-country guide of open access historical news sources from Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe.
Also useful is the UTL library guide to finding and searching current and historical newspapers across Canada, the United States, and the world.