Old man reading (Dakers Collection)

The Haddingtonshire Courier is the most popular newspaper amongst our visitors. It was first published in 1859 and is still published today as the East Lothian Courier. We have indexes from 1859–1945 and 1980–2003.

The Musselburgh News first went into print in 1889. It is not indexed. To look it up it will help if you have an approximate date for the information you are looking for.

Perhaps the most interesting newspaper in our collection is the Haddingtonshire Advertiser & East Lothian Journal. It was first published in 1890 and ran until 1923. During the Great War the newspaper published photographs of local men fighting at the front and images from the trenches. Photographs in newspapers did not become commonplace until much later, making this an invaluable and rare resource. This newspaper is unindexed at present.

While the newspapers in East Lothian are the most important, there are occasional stories that are printed in papers outside the area – for example, in The Scotsman and The Evening Dispatch – and in magazines. Over the years people have cut these out and pasted them into scrapbooks. At present we have 74 books. These are indexed.

In addition to these newspapers we also have a number of others, most of which only lasted for a short period. These are: