Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, June 27 2021 page B1 Fayetteville Pride Parade

Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, June 27 2021 page B1 Fayetteville Pride Parade

Your Libraries have recently added an impressive array of newspaper archive databases.  Covering a time span from the  18th – 20th centuries and a geographic range from the American south to Imperial Russia, Revolutionary Mexico, and beyond, these collections offer rich opportunities for primary source research. They join our already extensive collection of online newspaper databases offering thousands of publications from around the globe. We’ll be posting a series on these new resources over the next few weeks.

But today’s post is big news for our statewide and local papers, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.  The popular Arkansas Democrat-Gazette archive (Current and Historical) has recently added PDF page images for the Little Rock paper covering 2017 – present and for the Northwest Arkansas edition from 2021 – . Unlike PDF images for the historical editions of the Gazette and Democrat, these current PDFs are in full color. Issues are generally available by 10am the morning of publication (excepting weekends).

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette text and image collections

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette text and image collections

All the News that was Fit to be Printed

While the text version of the paper only includes articles written by Democrat-Gazette staff and omits wire stories or syndicated features, the page image shows all content, including color and black and white photos, advertisements, stories and opinion pieces from other papers, puzzles and games, shopping inserts, and even comics!

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette showing text and image versions side by side.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette showing text and image versions side by side.

Search Results: Text and Page Images

Searching and search results for the PDF version of the paper is separate from the text version.  When you search a text collection, your results will show the article title, date, pages, and other citation information. Results from an image collection will only show the date and page of the PDF.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Search results compared

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Search results compared

Pagination and Citations

The older historical PDFs of the Gazette and Democrat have continuous pagination, which does not reflect the pagination actually used in the printed paper.  When you use the citation generator tool for these historical editions, the page number given does not reflect the actual printed page number.  (Tip: get the correct page number from the PDF).

Arkansas Gazette September 29, 1991 showing continuous pagination versus actual pagination on PDF

Arkansas Gazette September 29, 1991 showing continuous pagination versus actual pagination on PDF

In contrast, these recently-added page image collections show the correct section and page number for items.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette February 18, 2020 page 4a

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette February 18, 2020 page 4a

Page Images for Other Papers

In addition to the Democrat-Gazette, America’s News will be adding PDF images to hundreds of other U.S. papers.  Check the Format column on the source list for image availability.

Look for the Format image in America's News to find PDF versions of papers

Look for the Format “image” in America’s News to find PDF versions of papers