Searching the database:
Using the search bar, enter the terms you are looking for, such as “clocktower” or “John Smith.”
Tip: Think about any variations in spelling that may have occurred, such as “clock tower” or “Jon Smith.”
If you know what newspaper the article you’re looking for is in, you can choose to only search that newspaper from the dropdown menu below the search bar. If you don’t know, that’s ok! It will just search all the newspapers for your terms.
Once you enter your search terms, there will be a list of retrievals that contain your search terms. They are listed chronologically from earliest to latest on the immediate left. Click on the blue link to view the page.
Browsing the database:
By using the links labeled “Click here to browse by year” or “Click here to browse by publication,” you can view all the articles from a given year or newspaper.
If you are looking for something in a given time frame, such as December of 1989, it’s easiest to browse by year. Select 1989, then click the Search Year button.
Results will be listed chronologically in order on the left. Choose from your desired dates and click the blue link.
If you are looking for something in a specific newspaper, for example, a wedding announcement in The Chelsea Standard, you should select the newspaper. Newspapers will be divided into year ranges, so it is still important to know a general time frame. If you know that the wedding was sometime around 1912, you would select the Chelsea Standard 1910-1919 option from the dropdown menu.
Once you click “Search publication,” the issues will be listed by date. You can then find the appropriate year and click on it to view.
Now what?
You have found the article you were looking for, hooray! This section will give you some tips and tricks to help with your search.
Searching within the page:
To search within the page, you can press Ctrl f (or Command f for Mac users). A small search box will appear in the upper right-hand corner of your browser. You can then type in a keyword to help you locate what you’re looking for in the page. (Bonus tip: this trick works not just in the Chelsea newspapers database, but for any website!)
Once you hit Enter, it will search the page and tell you how many times your keyword appears on the page. In this example, the term appears twice. Note that the term entered is highlighted in blue below.
Zooming:
To make the size of the print bigger or smaller on the page, you can press Ctrl + or –, (or Command + or – for Mac users). Pressing the + button will zoom in, and the – button will zoom out. (Bonus tip: this trick works for all websites and even most software!)
Printing:
If you try to print directly from the browser, you will print the whole newspaper page. To print only the section you want, you will need to follow a few extra steps.
Step 1:
Make sure that as much of your desired article as possible is displayed on your screen.
Step 2:
Press Ctrl PrtScn (Print Screen). The PrtScn button is usually located in the upper right-hand of the keyboard. This copies your entire screen as an image. Note: Ctrl PrtScn is only available for PC users.
Step 3:
Open Paint or a similar program on your computer.
Step 4:
Right-click the mouse and select Paste from the menu that appears, OR press Ctrl v to paste the copy into the program. You should have an exact copy of what your screen looked like!
Step 5:
You can then use the tools in your program to crop, resize, or otherwise alter your picture so you only get the article you’re looking for. In Paint, you do this by using the Select tool to draw a box around the area you want to keep, and then clicking on the Crop button. Or, you can skip this step and leave it as-is.
Step 6:
Hit print in your Paint program! You can also save your image electronically so you don’t have to search for it again if you ever need it.
Have more questions? Give us a call (734) 475-8732 ext. 219