According to membership in the Arab League, to date, the Arab World consists of 22 different countries located within the region of the Middle East and North Africa. While all those countries list Arabic as at least one of their national languages, not all of them publish primarily in Arabic. The list of countries in this research guide consists of those which publish in Arabic as their primary language. Most, if not all of these countries, however, also publish in other languages such as English and French. All of these newspaper publications are also listed under each country by language and title.
Newspapers published in the vernacular are in microfilm format and may be accessible to researchers in the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room. Newspapers published in Western languages on the other hand, are generally available in the Newspaper and Current Periodicals Reading Room. These latter newspapers are also mostly in microfilm format and may be accessible to researchers visiting that reading room.
The designation of where newspapers are located is indicated at the bottom of the catalog record retrievable by clicking on the link provided for each title in the country you select at the left in this guide. Holdings information for each title being will be added or updated as it becomes available. Please submit an Ask a Librarian request if you would like to have a particular date range checked that is not available in the holdings statement. Furthermore, please note that some of the newspapers in this guide are either born-digital or are otherwise unavailable except through their websites. In these cases, only the newspapers that provide free access to their articles have been added to the list. The addresses for these websites are added under the corresponding titles.
Most of the Arabic titles listed under the various Arab countries may be searched in the Library of Congress Catalog. To conduct an effective search, however, the Library of Congress transliteration system must be used. The Library's Arabic Romanization Table (PDF, 144 KB) provides guidelines on how to transliterate according to the Library's system.
While the diacritics provided on the table (such as macrons, etc.) are not necessary for any catalog search, the correct use of the letters and spelling for transliteration is required.
Furthermore, although searching in Arabic may prove useful in many cases, it requires changing the language option at the bottom right of the screen and familiarity with the Arabic keyboard--there are currently no workstations dedicated to Arabic language searches in the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room.
Finally, please note that some of the newspapers listed are either born-digital or are otherwise unavailable except through their website. In these cases, this research guide only includes the websites that provide free access to their articles. The addresses for these websites are listed under the title.
