The head of the Guardian's library on… how to access the paper's archive material

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/01/guardian-library-access-archive-material

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Hardly a day goes by without the Guardian's library receiving calls from readers seeking help with their research. Requests range from those simply trying to get hold of a back issue, to family historians tracing articles about long-lost relatives, through to students checking the date of a Steve Bell cartoon.

The department is a private reference library and can't get involved in research for non-staff members. However, the team is happy to advise readers about online sources and libraries that hold Guardian-related material.

Back copies of the paper can be bought from companies such as Historic Newspapers. They sell everything from the most recent issues to editions from more than 100 years ago.

If it is just the text of Guardian articles from the past decade or so that is needed, then the paper's website is the best place to turn. The archive goes back to 1999 but includes some earlier material. Text from the paper is also available from commercial databases such as LexisNexis and Factiva, while a number of public libraries give free access to a text database called NewsBank.

More often than not though, it's the image of the article, compete with picture and caption, that is required. The best source here is the Guardian and Observer digital archive, which holds pdf images of almost every issue going back to the Manchester Guardian's launch in May 1821, (Manchester was dropped from the title in August 1959). Access is available from the Guardian's website (a charge applies) as well as some public and academic libraries.

Browsing is a key part of the newspaper research process and for some scholars nothing beats scrolling through rolls of microfilm. The British Library's newspaper library at Colindale, north London, recently closed but its vast microfilm collection has been moved to the library's St Pancras site and will be open to readers from March 2014.

However, before embarking on what can be a very long trawl through back copies of the paper, it's worth checking that the piece hasn't already been reproduced in the daily From the archive series or republished in a book. Over the past century the paper has produced all manner of anthologies. The Bedside Guardian, an annual collection of the best writing and cartoons, has appeared since 1952, while in 1971 an omnibus of the paper's first 150 years appeared. There have also been numerous books on subjects as wide-ranging as the General Strike and the Tour de France.

Questions are regularly asked about aspects of the Guardian's history: what was the paper's line on Irish home rule or who exactly was the writer Artifex? (Canon Peter Green, the paper's religious commentator during the first world war.) More often than not, they can be answered by consulting one of the histories of the paper, perhaps the most useful being David Ayerst's Guardian: Biography of a Newspaper (Collins, 1971).

In-depth research, though, requires going through old correspondence and papers and these can be found in the Guardian News & Media archive. Mariam Yamin, the archivist, says: "We hold a wide variety of original records including minutes of meetings, reports and accounts, correspondence, oral history recordings with former staff, illustrations and cartoons, and extensive photographic collections." Descriptions of material available can be found on the archive's website (theguardian.com/gnm-archive), but readers can view material by appointment in our reading room in Kings Place.

Archive material prior to the paper's move to London in the early 1960s is held at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. As well as a large collection of dispatches submitted by foreign and war correspondents, its catalogue includes a long list of contributors – a useful resource as, for many years, only writers' initials would be given at the end of articles.

Once that elusive article or photograph has been found, bear in mind that permission must be sought before publication in a newsletter, blog or thesis. There isn't always a charge but checking with the Guardian syndication department is always recommended.

Finally, if the plan is to reproduce a front page, it's worth noting that Guardian didn't start printing news on its front page until September 1952 – before that it was just a page of adverts.

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