Finding Newspaper article

It was interesting to read an article by Charles Trentelman in the Ogden paper the other day about the problems he'd encountered trying to do research in local newspapers. He notes "...that finding information is a challenge. Most histories concentrate on bankers, businessmen and pioneers. To dig dirt, you need newspapers. But newspaper archives are hard to access. Paper copies rarely exist and are too brittle to handle. Reader/printers for microfilm are creaking antiques, and digging through endless reels of microfilm is mind numbing." I could really relate to this because I've had problems helping patrons find information from local newspapers.

With all the new technology, many newspapers are digitized now but there are still years that are not covered in any databases. Local Utah newspapers are searchable on the University of Utah Stewart Library's digital newspaper site at http://digitalnewspapers.org/ . The Box Elder News is available from 1904 to 1926. The Standard-Examiner is available from 1879 to 1910, and then 1923 to 1927. If you want more current information, you can search "Newsbank" at the Utah State Library website http://pioneer.utah.gov/home.html for the Salt Lake Tribune, Standard-Examiner, and Desert News. The searchable dates for these newspapers ranges from 1988 to current. If you subscribe to the Box Elder News Journal online, they have their newspaper archived back to 2006 or 2007.

Mr. Trentelman shares that the Weber County Library now has a new online microfilm service that has 5,000 word searchable newspapers on its website and covers from 1902 to 1977. This service must be accessed at Weber County library but that isn't too far away if you are really intent on finding information from a newspaper. Mr. Trentelman also noted that the librarians were very patient helping him learn how to use the database and that you can print out the information you find or save it to a flash drive.

Susan