Kansas Digital Newspapers
Select historic Kansas newspapers are freely available on the websites of two of our digital partners:
Free access to millions of pages of historic newspapers produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program.
KS Resident Access: (This link provides free access to all KSHS content on Newspapers.com but only slightly more than the Open Access Portal below. For Kansas residents only. Requires Kansas driver's license/state ID verification)
Open Access Portal: Click the Newspapers.com logo above to freely access nearly 12 million pages from the KSHS newspaper collection, including nearly every paper from every city and town in Kansas between 1854-1923.
The Kansas Digital Newspapers (KDN) program seeks to digitize and make available on the Internet digital editions of historic Kansas newspapers. The Kansas Historical Society (KSHS) manages KDN with support from both public and private partners and draws on its comprehensive state newspaper collection, including more than 50,000 rolls of newspaper microfilm created by KSHS. With nearly 12 million historic Kansas newspaper pages already available online, KDN provides Kansas students, teachers, genealogists, historians and other researchers free online access to these valuable primary sources and an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover Kansas history through the local press.
More than 300,000 historic Kansas newspaper pages are currently available through Chronicling America, including forty-two titles from twenty-eight cities. KDN began in 2009 with a National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in partnership with the Library of Congress. Additional NDNP grant awards in 2011 and 2013 funded more Kansas titles. By 2016, more than 300,000 pages of Kansas newspapers published before 1923 will be freely available online through funding provided by NDNP. See Chronicling America to search and see a title list of available Kansas newspapers.
In 2013 KDN began working with with Newspapers.com to digitize additional pre-1923 papers from the Historical Society's vast newspaper archive. KSHS papers on Newspapers.com for more than three years (nearly 12 million pages as of Feb 2022) may be accessed for free using the OPEN ACCESS link above (no login or verification required). All KSHS newspapers on Newspapers.com are available free to Kansans who verify their residence via driver’s license or state ID card information through the RESIDENCY ACCESS link above. Since KSHS is not saving any of the data used to authenticate your residency, you will need to register each time you want to access the site.
Digitization of pre-1923 newspapers published in Kansas is nearly complete with about 12 million pages now available. There are a few pre-1923 titles still waiting to be digitized and we will be working on completing those in the near future.
For more information on the Kansas Digital Newspapers program and how you can be involved please contact Senior Archivist for Collections, Michael Church, at michael.church@ks.gov or 785-272-8681, ext 271.