AZ: Locating Newspapers

Let’s pretend you are researching the history of Prohibition in Arizona. What newspapers are focused on your topic? You don’t know and you wouldn’t know where to start?

The papers are  Arizona Guardian (published in Phoenix) and the Arizona Prohibitionist (published in Glendale) and you would locate them by using today’s State Agency Database Highlight:

Arizona Newspaper Project – This databases allows you to locate newspaper holdings by title, city, county, subject and OCLC number. Records include information on where the newspaper can be found and when it was published. The subject feature is a good way to find ethnic or political newspapers (i.e. Jewish, Catholic, African American, Masonic, etc).

Here is the record for the Arizona Prohibitionist:

Title: Arizona Prohibitionist Location of Coverage: City: Glendale County: Maricopa Dates of Coverage: Known Dates : 1938-19uu Frequency: Irregular Bibliographic Data: Subject: Prohibition Library of Congress Number: Sn2002-60091 Previous Title: Later Title: OCLC Record Number: 32185875

Institutions with Holdings Institution Click for Detail OCLC Symbol City Holdings Format Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records AZP Phoenix <1938:V.1:1:2><1939:V.2:9-1940:5,NO.4-6><1942:V.4:1-2><1943:V.5:1><1944:3,10><1945:2,6><1946:1> Paper

It’s important to remember that this is NOT a full text database. You won’t find individual articles here, nor will you find an online index to newspaper articles. But once you know a given newspaper exists, you might be able to borrow microfilm for specific time periods through Interlibrary Loan at your local library.

The Arizona page of State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States is maintained by Daniel Cornwall. But he’s looking for an AZ based librarian to take over the page.