Kansas Digital Newspapers

Select historic Kansas newspapers are freely available on the websites of several of our digital partners:

(requires Kansas driver's license/ state ID verification)

(at Fort Hays State University, currently under development)

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 more than one 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 200,000 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 partnered with Newspapers.com to digitize additional pre-1923 papers from the Historical Society's vast newspaper archive. These newspapers are available free to Kansans who verify their residence via driver’s license or state ID card information. Since KSHS is not saving any of the data you provide to gain access to Kansas papers on Newspapers.com, you will need to register each time you want to access the site. More than one million pages are now available. To access historic Kansas newspapers on Newspapers.com Verify your Kansas Driver’s License.

KDN is also partnering with the Forsyth Library at Fort Hays State University in order to digitize additional Kansas newspapers from all across the state. Although this site is available to the public, it is still under development. For more information see Kansas Digital Newspapers at Forsyth Library Digital Collections.