AZ Memory Project Newspapers

This is a tutorial on how to use the AZ Memory Project's Digital Newspapers. We created this post to help anyone who might be daunted or confused by this rather larger database of old Arizona newspapers.  The very first to do is go to The AZ Memory Project: https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/

Instructions are BELOW each screen capture.

 Once you click the AZ Memory Project link the screen above it what you will see.  Simply click the image for "Arizona Historical Digital Newspapers.

 The next screen you will see shows each of the Arizona Counties.  Pick you choice.  For this tutorial we used Pinal County.  Just click the County's name.

 The next screen will bring up all available digital copies of newspapers from that County. Bear in mind not all newspapers for any given County are digitized or available online.  This page will show you only what the AZ Memory Project has online.  In some counties there are many newspapers available so simply scroll down to find whichever newspaper interests you.  In this case we picked the "Arizona Weekly Enterprise" because we could see it was the oldest available Pinal County newspaper.  Simply click the link for the newspaper of your choice.

 Next you will see an excellent but short description of the history of that particular newspaper.  However, the important link is the large button that says "Browse and Search This Title.  Click that button.

Your next challenge is to pick a specific issue of the newspaper to browse and read.  The very earliest issues of "The Arizona Weekly Enterprise" are in very poor condition.  We therefore scrolled down until we found what looks like a clean copy of the newspaper.  It just so happened to be The April 1st, 1882, issue of "The Arizona Weekly Enterprise."  Naturally, click on the issue of your choice.

The next screen you will see shows Page 1 of the edition of your choice.  Obviously, you have a lot of choices on this screen.  The key choice is the button labeled "View." If you don't want to inspect Page 1, the other pages in this edition are in the right column and you can select any one of your choice.  Remember that for EACH page you bring you, you must press the "View" button.

Once you have pressed "View" then you can Zoom in for MUCH greater detail on any given page. The zoom feature is truly amazing! Zoom controls are faintly shown in the upper left of any given page.  I have found that I can also use the PC keyboard command "SHIFT +" and control the zoom increments to a finer degree than I can with the embedded zoom controls.

Now your individual challenge entails roaming around that issue of the newspaper of your choice looking for something that catches your attention.  In our case, we spotted this ad on Page 4 and then zoomed in on it.

This ad really caught our attention in a Big Way. So many things to ponder in this ad.  All of the classic questions: "Who, What, Where, Why, When & How?" come to mind when we see an ad such as this.  We'd never heard of "Butte, Arizona."

Once we find anything that captures our attention, we also capture it!  On our PC, we used the screen capture function.  Typically each PC had a slightly different keyboard command to enable a screen capture.  We use the freeware program "Irfanview" to crop and adjust the screen capture.  Many such programs and apps are available.

Of course, this is where the Real Fun begins!  How to answer all of our questions about Butte? 

We will write a separate blog post on the process (and journey) we followed to learn all about Butte.

Good Luck and Thanks for reading.  We certainly hope that you share whatever you find and investigate with the Facebook history group(s) of your preference(s).

Sincerely, John Parsons, Rimrock, Arizona