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For some reason I can't access the website because I apparently haven't edited more than ten times in the last month (which I have). I have logged out and back in, but I still don't have access. Is anyone else aware of this issue?Alexeyevitch(talk)04:43, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reporting the same issue. I checked my Wikipedia Library Profile/Settings and my "Recent global edit count" is negative. It has to be a bug.NGPezz (talk)05:26, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's working for me now, my recent edits have returned to the positive range. I did have to log out and back in again for the reset to go through, it's not entirely automatic.NGPezz (talk)07:23, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about this - unexpected side effect of a change elsewhere in MediaWiki. I believe that this should be resolved for everyone now. You may need to log out and back in to prompt an update. If that doesn't fix it for anyone please let me know.Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk)10:48, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place. I wanted to make people in the library research/resources part of theWikipedia project namespace aware of this AfD.
This is the first sentence from this list article:
"Canadian Libraries is a digital collection of ebooks and texts at the Internet Archive. This collection contains over 400,000 items sponsored by Canadian Library Partners:"
A previous AfD was conducted in 2015 under a different name:
I am experiencing the same thing beginning about 12 hours ago. wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/users/my_library says that my subscription to newspapers.com expired on September 29, although access continued working up until yesterday afternoon. I think TWL should notify users that their subscription to a resource is about to expire so we can renew our applications as promptly as possible. -Reschultzed (talk)15:32, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Really?! So this might not be a renewal issue then, but a much broader actual problem. It's just for a lot of us, our renewal period coincided with this issue. That's a revelation. Thanks, Gamaliel.SilverserenC17:53, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Related to the above topic, I put in my renewal request on September 28th. It has just sat at Pending ever since then. This is taking a lot longer than last year when I renewed (which only took a week to happen). Is there some reason for the current delay?SilverserenC23:04, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for contacting you directly,Samwalton9 (WMF), but I'm not sure who specifically is in charge of renewals, particularly when it comes toNewspapers.com. Do you happen to have any info on what's going on with that system? It's never taken this long before for annual subscription renewals to happen and it's really hampering my ability to work on article improvements.SilverserenC17:40, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am also experiencing the issues above -- Wikipedia Library says my newspapers.com access expired on Sep 29th, but it was working for me until around Oct 9th (I have since re-applied after realizing I lost access). My previous application was approved in six days byUser:Nikkimaria, so maybe they can assist? Thank you, --Habst (talk)17:26, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to Gamaliel just above,Habst, this isn't a renewal issue. Apparently, everyone's (or at least everyone here's) access stopped working around October 9th. Even those who wouldn't need to renew until next year. Our renewal period just coincided with that timing and may be unrelated to the problem.SilverserenC17:33, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly something weird is going on and it's not as simple as general access to Newspapers.com accounts. Which is par for the course with them, they have the weirdest account issues. Frequently caused on their side, for whatever reason.SilverserenC17:48, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto. Just checked. I have a registered and longstanding account that worked well until just now. I see that it is listed as "expired." I have placed a renewal request.Coretheapple (talk)22:21, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My renewal request was approved this afternoon, about 63 hours after I submitted it (I hope not ahead of people waiting longer). Access still does not work, though. -Reschultzed (talk)01:22, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just checked my TWL account and mine also has gone from pending to "Renewal - Sent to partner" as of the past few hours. Do note,Reschultzed, that that doesn't mean fully approved yet. It means that Wikimedia has approved our renewal request and sent the request to Newspapers.com to get the account extension done. Now we're waiting on Newspapers.com to do that last part on their end. Unfortunately, none of this explains why this all happened in the first place or what the heck is going on withGamaliel's account above, since they weren't even up for renewal yet and they still lost account access anyways. Hopefully we get a response from Sam or someone else from the WMF Wikipedia Library team tomorrow (since I presume they don't work on the weekend, hence why we haven't heard from anyone official as of yet).SilverserenC01:54, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm confused. I have a longstanding account associated with Wikipedia. It worked when I last tried a week or two ago. But I tried again yesterday and suddenly it stopped working. I'm still a registered user but when I go to "My Library" I see that it says "expired" as of Sept. 29. I don't recall that as an "anniversary date" for access or whatever but there you have it. A shame, as I was hoping to do a thorough clipping search for a certain recently deceased actor but it will have to wait I guess.Coretheapple (talk)13:28, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can still search the archives without pro access, and you can even get the OCR text on each page for free by changing the word "image" to "newspage" in the result URL and see "Extracted Article Text" section (this is all intended functionality). You just can't create clippings. --Habst (talk)13:37, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just went through my browser history, which shows beyond any doubt that I was able to use Newspapers.com as recently as Oct. 9, a good ten days after my account supposedly "expired" Sept. 29. Odd.Coretheapple (talk)19:06, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I corrected the date of expiration to Sept. 29. That is the expiration date given on the library page. I gather that multiple editors saw their access terminate on that date.Coretheapple (talk)20:55, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Throwing in another example, I renewed a little while ago and it currently says "Expiry date: Oct 12, 2026" (i.e., a year from now!) but I always get popups telling me to subscribe. I notice that no special WMF URLs persist, I just end up at the regular newspapers.com site.~ L 🌸 (talk)02:28, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just noting on the expiry date in The Wikipedia Library - this is a 12-month estimate from when we marked your application as 'Sent' so it generally isn't 100% accurate, and is (I can see) somewhat confusing right after your application has been approved, because your account won't be set up yet. I've just filedT407601 to clarify this.Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk)07:22, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all, it looks like we approved a large batch of accounts last October, and this is simply the yearly expiry rolling around - as others have noted above, if you request renewal in the library we get that sent over to Newspapers.com as soon as possible (usually within a few days) and then we just have to wait a short while for them to configure the accounts. Itshould be the case that you get an email a couple of weeks before the expiry date (which is an estimate based on when we sent your application over, so is usually a little early). I've had a quick look and it seems like those emails might have silently broken at some point - seeT407250 for more on that. I'm not sure why one or two users' accounts expired early, but that seems to be the exception - most reports here seem to be accounts that were set up 12 months ago and are just up for renewal.Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk)15:35, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I use an email address for Wikipedia that I go to only rarely so if I had gotten anything, I wouldn't have known. I used to use an email I use frequently but here was a problem with it. Besides, I get a lot of emails about Wikipedia (mostly about Phabricator) and I wouldn't have wanted those cluttering up another address.—Vchimpanzee • talk •contributions •17:07, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just realized. It asked me to confirm my email address. That is yet another email address, different from the one I use for Wikipedia. I wonder if that is part o the problem. Because the email address I use for newspapers.com had problems when I tried to use it for Wikipedia.—Vchimpanzee • talk •contributions •18:04, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I go into account, I get a message saying "Limited Access You can only search and browse newspaper archives." Under Subscription it says "You're currently a Registered Guest. This free subscription gets you access to search newspapers but you will not be able to view the full page. Get a paid subscription for access."
My access had run out but it's now been renewed. So does someone need to go in and update the access to Unlimited, or subscription to Advanced (or whatever it is)?In Vitrio (talk)21:20, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in the same situation -- I renewed my WL access a few days ago and WL says it won't expire til next year, but when I log in to Newspapers.com it won't let me access newspapers and tells me to subscribe. It's not clear to me if we're just waiting for the WL renewal to make its way over to Newspapers.com or if there's another problem.~ L 🌸 (talk)22:05, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think last October was when we finished the process of switching from the proxy back to approving accounts, so it would make sense that the one-year access would expire now for almost everybody who's been using the site through TWL for longer than a year. If I look at my Payment History under Account Details on the site, it says that my access was approved on Oct 9, 2024, and expired on Oct 9, 2025. I guess the period between September 29 and October 9 was the same period that was spent approving the application last year. Hopefully Newspapers.com does its part of the process soon and we'll all be back to our research. -Reschultzed (talk)21:54, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In case it's helpful, I just received my Newspapers.com email saying I'm all set up again and I logged in and confirmed I've got the access I was expecting now. Thanks everyone!Jessamyn (my talk page)15:19, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So I got my renewal approved by the Wikipedia Library, but I am still unable to make clippings. The site seems unstable for me in general—last night I kept getting 404 errors, and I had to log off and clear cookies. Now it's not giving me 404 errors, but the nag screen for Publisher Extra is failing to load its contents properly. Is this normal for renewals, do I just gotta wait a couple days? Or is this affecting other people?DigitalIceAge (talk)18:50, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@DigitalIceAge: Approval by TWL (email reading "Thank you for applying for access to Newspapers.com resources through The Wikipedia Library. We are happy to inform you that your application has been approved.") just means they've sent it out to Newspapers.com. You now need to wait for Newspapers.com to approve it on their end. For me, my access worked after I received an email from Newspapers.com a couple days after TWL approval reading:
"Hello,
The account is under [email].
Thank you for registering your email address with Newspapers.com. Your email address has been verified and confirmed. Your account is now active.... "ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me!19:01, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not every T&F journal is accessible via the Wikipedia library. In this case it's so old that it's public domain. You can often find the contents of old journals like that on BHL or archive.org. In this case I managed to find the work you were looking for on BHL[1].Hemiauchenia (talk)23:27, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I was able to verify the content I needed to.
I'd prefer to just grab it myself... does Wikipedia Library offer the Newsbank service? No discussion in the Archive.
I have access to my local paper via Newsbank via my local library. But is there a way for us to get access to all papers they hold via The Wikipedia Library? 15:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)PK-WIKI (talk)15:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
