BelgicaPress, database of digitised historical Belgian newspapers

BelgicaPress is a full-text database from the Belgian Royal Library where you can find (as of spring 2018) all the digitised historical Belgian newspapers online (from 1814 to 1985) including the censored press of both World Wars.

Thanks to the application of Optical Character Recognition (OCR), the content is full-text searchable at word level.

Search operators

In 'Advanced search' you can search for certain words (and choose 'All of these words', 'One of these words', 'The exact phrase' or 'None of these words'). Clicking +, you can add an extra search field. You can add a date or a period, choose a language (Dutch, French or German) and/or select the title of a newspaper. You can browse the newspapers of a certain day. You cannot use truncation or masking.

Export

You can retrieve a permalink with the button .

You cannot use the Zotero browser plugin.

Access

You can access this database for free. The pages that are still protected by copyright (younger than 100 year old) are only available via Belnet (including UGentNet) or in the reading room of the Royal Library.

Tips

In addition to Belgicapress for digitized Belgian newspapers, the KBR presents BelgicaPeriodicals. This free portal gives you access to 299 periodicals and periodical publications from 1622 to the present.