Search

The Search tool on the home page would be the best place to start to see if we have a specific item or collection related to your research subject. All items with text, including images, newspapers, documents, and more, are fully text searchable. From the home page, you can enter a search term and it will search the nearly 200,000 items on the Arizona Memory Project to see if there are any matches. Results will be returned in the order of relevance to your search term, and hovering over the item will provide you with the complete title. You can reorder them by when they were added to the site, in reverse alphabetical order, or into a list instead of the default tile view. You can also use the filters on the left to view items by the title's first letter, by item type, or by date.

For a more advanced search, you can click the Search button in the black toolbar on the left. There you can apply filters like item type, where to search (title, fields, or fields AND searchable text), date (for a year, use 01/01/YYYY to 12/31/YYYY), and keywords or exact phrase match. Applying these filters before hitting search will increase the speed of your results. Once the results are displayed, you can reorder them or add additional filters as described above.

If you found an item you'd like to share, use the icons on the bottom left of the page to share to an email address or your favorite social media platform. If you want to save an item to use later, you can bookmark an item if you are logged into the Arizona Memory Project by clicking the Star button in the skinny grey toolbar to the left of the item. This will place it in your My Collection page, which is found in the black toolbar to the left.

Research Topics

Our Research Topic pages have collected materials from across the Arizona Memory Project and combined them to create a page of sources on Arizona's people, places, or events. These pages combine all materials that are related to a subject onto one page. You can also find buttons for People, Places, and Events the top of the Arizona Memory Project home page. These pages are constantly being updated and new pages are being created all the time, so be sure to check back regularly for more!

On the People pages, you will find links to Arizona's most famous and infamous residents- from governors and educators, to criminals and heroes. Each page contains materials about or from that person from across the Arizona Memory Project. The Place pages combine materials related to a specific place, whether it be a city or town, a specific building, National Park, mountain, or many more. These items will help you learn more about the places that make Arizona unique. The Event pages highlight items on the Arizona Memory Project that cover a specific event or time period in Arizona history. From wars to wildfires, labor disputes and political controversy, these pages will join materials that will provide multiple views of Arizona events.

Newspapers

Not every Arizona newspaper is eligible for digitization, but the newspapers you will find on the Arizona Memory Project cover the years 1859 to 1989. You will also find over 120 different newspapers from each of Arizona's 15 counties and across several different subjects and special communities. Every issue is fully text searchable with an option to open the pages in a separate viewer for an even crisper view. These newspapers can help provide a picture of what was important to a community at a point in time and how they managed things like economic hardships, natural disasters, global and local conflicts, and political issues. Newspapers also provide a snapshot of societal norms, fashion trends, community activities, and the businesses of the time.

New newspaper titles are being added all the time, so make sure to come back often to see if the title you are looking for has been digitized. You can also see a complete list of newspaper titles, locations, and years we have on microfilm and make an appointment to view them in our Reading Room.

Please note, some of our digitized newspapers are quite large, and may take a few moments to fully open on the page and/or in the separate viewer.

Need help searching the newspapers? Here is a video with some tips on how to find what you are looking for.

Other Materials

The nearly 200,000 items on the Arizona Memory Project are a great source of material for research projects, but it isn't even close to the number of items held by the State of Arizona Research Library. You can also search the Library's Vertical Files, which can be pulled for viewing by appointment in our Reading Room.

The Arizona State Archives, part of the Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records, may also have materials of interest to your research. In addition to their digital collections on the Arizona Memory Project, the Arizona State Archives collects some government documents, photographs, oral histories, personal papers, education, health, and institutional records, and provides access to Ancestry.com. Contact the Archives for more information or to schedule an appointment in our Reading Room to view materials.