Digital Collections

The periodical world is increasingly digital. Magazines will often have a website, a digital "e-print" issue, a print issue, or some combination of these. The Division collects content across all of these formats.

Primarily out of concern for copyright, very few current periodical issues are found freely available online. Many digital magazines and journals are held in subscription-based resources. The Library of Congress purchases such databases, and these resources are available to researchers while on-site at the Library. Subscription databases - marked with a padlock - are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress.

In addition, E-prints, or digital PDF versions of journal issues, that have been acquired for the Library's permanent collections are made available through two machines in the reading room via the "Stacks" platform. Selected magazine and journal websites are also captured regularly through web archiving.

If you are unable to visit the Library, you may be able to access these resources through your local public or academic library.

Marion Post Wolcott, photographer. Reading magazine beside his trailer home. Sarasota trailer park, Sarasota, Florida. 1941. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Underwood and Underwood. Library of Congress, Periodicals Reading room, General View. Between 1910 and 1930. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Gordon Parks, photographer. Daytona Beach, Florida. Bethune-Cookman College. Students in the library reading room.1943. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Selected Databases

Esquire Magazine Archive External This link opens in a new window
The Esquire Magazine Archive consists of cover to cover processing dating back to issue number one in October 1933 through March 2014 of the American popular men's magazine Esquire, published by Hearst Communications. Subject matter includes men's fashion, grooming, and etiquette, popular culture, celebrities, entertainers, and current news and events.
Factiva External This link opens in a new window
Factiva is a vast full text archive of publications and up-to-the-minute reports and news focusing on global developments and business. Combines over 35,000 sources from the Dow Jones Interactive and Reuters Business Briefing to provide premium business content from 200 countries and in 26 languages. Factiva is very strong in trade journals and company reports.
Requires username/password; see reference staff for assistance.
Nexis Uni External This link opens in a new window
Contains over 6,000 news, business, and legal sources, including deep backfiles and up-to-the-minute stories in national and regional newspapers, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news, and non-English language sources. Areas covered include full text of hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and newswires from the U.S. and around the world, hard-to-find broadcast transcripts from the major television and radio, and Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch and other foreign-language newspapers and magazines.
Popular Magazines External This link opens in a new window
Popular Magazines includes more than 1,000 of the most searched magazines across Gale InfoTrac products. All the titles were selected based on actual publication searches performed by library patrons. This database is 100% full text and includes over 600 titles recommended by Bowker's Magazines for Libraries.
PressReader External This link opens in a new window
PressReader provides instant online access to today's newspapers and popular periodicals from around the world in full-color, full-page format. The ever-expanding collection currently includes more than 6,000 U.S. and international titlesfrom over 100 countries in over 60 languages. Just like reading a print edition, viewers can browse articles and other key content, such as pictures, advertisements, classifieds, and notices. The service also provides up to a 60-day backfile and the ability to perform keyword searches across all titles and the entire backfile.
ProQuest Ethnic NewsWatch External This link opens in a new window
An interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish) and comprehensive full text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. Designed to provide the other side of the story, Ethnic News Watch (ENW) titles offer additional viewpoints from those proffered by the mainstream press.
The simultaneous user limit for this resource may result in temporary delays.
Vogue Archive External This link opens in a new window
The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition), from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. Every page, advertisement, cover and fold-out has been included, with rich indexing enabling you to find images by garment type, designer and brand names. The Vogue Archive preserves the work of the world's greatest fashion designers, stylists and photographers and is a unique record of American and international fashion, culture and society from the dawn of the modern era to the present day.
Women's Wear Daily Archive External This link opens in a new window
Womens Wear Daily (WWD) Archive is the only digitized source of the entire run of WWD, widely considered the Wall St. Journal of the fashion industry. From the first issue in 1910 to the present year, WWD Archive preserves one of the industry’s most influential reads, tracing day-to-day news, opinion, and socio-economic trends, from runway reports to beauty product reviews.

Current Periodical Collections at the Library of Congress

Digital Collections

Marion Post Wolcott, photographer. Reading magazine beside his trailer home. Sarasota trailer park, Sarasota, Florida. 1941. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Underwood and Underwood. Library of Congress, Periodicals Reading room, General View. Between 1910 and 1930. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Gordon Parks, photographer. Daytona Beach, Florida. Bethune-Cookman College. Students in the library reading room.1943. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Selected Databases