Newspapers

Revised January 2003

General Comments

The newspaper collection helps meet the needs of patrons for very current information as well as for retrospective research purposes. Newspapers are a particularly valuable source because of their immediacy both of reporting and of perspective.

Development Plan

The goal of this collection is to:

• provide a selection of national, regional, and local newspapers, with an especially strong coverage of state news.
• provide indexing tools.
• provide access to older editions of local county papers as well as The New York Times.

The newspapers selected to provide solid coverage of the state of Wyoming and government proceedings are the Casper Star-Tribune and the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.

The newspaper collection serves the general interests and concerns of northeastern Wyoming residents, including those interests that extend beyond community boundaries. In paper format the collection includes the major local (within a 100 mile radius) newspapers, papers of major Wyoming cities, papers from selected major regional cities, newspapers from major metropolitan areas of the country, and selected major national business newspapers. Coverage of other newspapers in the country is provided by NewsBank. While past editions are held in microfiche format, now this product is purchased as an on-line subscription and indexes articles from newspapers nationwide.

The Library orders The New York Times and the Gillette News-Record in microfilm to provide more durable copy for research. Old editions (some dating back to the early days of the century) of newspapers from surrounding counties are also available in microfilm format.

All newspaper indexes are received in electronic format including those which index selected major national papers as well as general periodicals. In addition, the Library's own in-house generated index to the Gillette News-Record provides indexing of articles pertaining to northeastern Wyoming from 1989 to December 12, 2001. Newer articles can be indexed through the Gillette News-Record's web site. The library develops and maintains indexing for births, marriages and deaths on its genealogy web page from 1912 to present.

Little fluctuation in holdings is anticipated. Any future acquisitions will be based on careful evaluation of their usefulness as sources of otherwise unavailable information.

Influencing Factors

Purchases and buying patterns are determined in large part by:

• electronic/Internet sources availability.
• budget constraints.
• patron requests.
• present and potential relevance to the community.
• shelf space.

Retention/Weeding

• Except for the Gillette News-Record, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, newspapers are kept only for the current and preceding three months. This is because of space concerns as well as access concerns since most of the papers are not included in the indexing sources. The Gillette News-Record and New York Times are continually collected on microfilm and held in the film cabinets indefinitely. No additional retrospective acquisition of surrounding county newspapers is anticipated.
• A few magazine titles printed on newsprint and in a tabloid format are designated as "magazines in newspaper format". These titles are displayed as magazines but stored as newspapers, with a correspondingly shorter retention time. Such magazines are retained for one year, plus the current year.