Online access to San Luis Obispo historic newspapers:

San Luis Obispo newspaper coverage can be searched in several places:

• Tribune Archives (1869-2001), Cal Poly login required
  • Access for community users: visit the library and use our community computers or bring your personal device and connect to the database using the guest wi-fi. 
• Tribune (2001- present) Cal Poly login required
  • Access for community users: visit the library and use our community computers or bring your personal device and connect to the database using the guest wi-fi. 
• The SLO Public Library provides online access to the Tribune from 2000 - present for anyone with a library card
• SLO Newspapers (1869-1925) at the California Digital Newspaper Collection (public, FREE access)
  • Digitized content includes Morning Tribune (1883), San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram (1870-1923) and San Luis Obispo Tribune (Weekly, 1869-1925)
• SLO Newspapers at newspapers.com (personal $$ subscription required)
• Learn more about the library's newspaper collections

Print and microfilm access to San Luis Obispo County historic newspapers

• The San Luis Obispo Public Library holds microfilm of many historical local newspapers: https://www.slolibrary.org/index.php/reference/reference-services
• The History Center of San Luis Obispo holds print issues of newspapers of San Luis Obispo County from the 1860s-1970s. 

• Cal Poly Student Newspaper Online Archive (1916-2011): 
• University Archives has digitized the campus newspaper under various titles from 1916 to 2011.
• Mustang News Website (current)
• Keyword searches can take you back through their webpages
• Mustang News Archived Websites (2011 - present): 
• University Archives is capturing the website quarterly as archived webpages via Archive-It

Tips for searching online: 

• Use quotation marks to search a phrase. Searching "International Students" will search for that phrase, rather than any use of international AND student.
• Use Ctrl+F (PC) or Command+F (Mac) to search keywords inside a pdf.
• Create an advanced search that searches the years you are focusing on to get targeted results
• When you find a helpful source, see what terms the authors are using. Then try searching those terms as keywords.
• Can't find what you are looking for? Try to broaden your search.
• Searching for individuals: start with a search by their last name. Then expand. For example, I could be referred to as "Sorvetti," "Ms. Sorvetti", "Laura Sorvetti" "Laura Ann Sorvetti", "L. Sorvetti," "L.A.Sorvetti"....
• If you find a specific news story, browse the issues before and after that article to see if there were any follow-up or related articles.
• Sometimes people misspelled names, places or other words! Try searching different terms that may have been used. For example, local merchant Ah Louis was also referred to in the papers as "Ah Luis."
• Some advanced search interfaces will allow you to search with a "wildcard," usually an asterisk. The asterisk (*) can be used to search variables of a word. For example, educat* will tell the database to look for all possible endings of that root. Results may include educate, educated, education, educational, educator, etc.

Please note that you may encounter materials that include offensive, derogatory, and out-of-date perspectives, images, and terms. 

The computer uses something called "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR) to read scanned text pages. If the original page is hard to read, the computer may not produce good OCR and the text will not be read by the computer correctly. See this example from a scan of the Cal Poly student newspaper: 

Sometimes you may not find what you are searching for because the computer did not read the text correctly! Try many different keywords to search if you are not finding what you are looking for.