Guidelines on research, reprints

Over the past few weeks I've had quite a few calls asking for me or the staff of this newspaper to do in-depth research for someone. While I'm fairly flattered that they called or sent out an e-mail and even thought of us to begin with, the bottomline is we simply don't have time to do research for folks.

The Hungry Horse News is entirely written and edited by the staff here. We have no wire services. So, for example, there is a hole on a page, someone has to write a story or take picture to fill it.

In a typical week we finish one newspaper and turn right around and start another (with a break for a cup of coffee, of course).

The weeks roll on and pretty soon you wonder where summer went. The nice thing about this pace, of course, is that winter goes fairly quickly as well. In fact, life can pass you by entirely if you're not careful.

I'm not complaining, of course. Columbia Falls and Glacier National Park are pretty cool places to be, but they also take a lot of manpower to cover.

So if you want to research something in the Hungry Horse News, we have the following suggestions:

1) Try the online edition first. Obituaries, most of sports and the top three or four stories of the week are posted online. The archives go back to about 2002. A note about obits: They're all one document for that week, so you may have to scroll through the document to find the one your looking for.

2) Go through our hard copies. Our hard copies, in bound volumes, are here at the office, the Columbia Falls library and in Glacier National Park. Here at the office we often even have back issues available for purchase, or you can have copies made. There are no electronic copies of old editions available online. Sorry. Maybe someday, but not just yet.

3) Things get a bit trickier with photos. We can't make reprints of most of Mel Ruder's photos unless they've been published recently (which means it was digitized and we actually have it). Many of his old negatives he gave to Glacier or are owned by his family. Yes, we do have hundreds of old pictures, but no, you can't borrow them. They don't leave the building. No exceptions.

4) Photos after 1978, when Brian Kennedy owned the paper, are generally more accessible, but Kennedy, too, took some of them with him when he sold the paper. The ones we do have are pretty easy to find, provided you know the exact issue the photo appeared in. Be prepared to wait several weeks for copies, however. It still takes quite a bit of work, and in the summer, you might wait months.

5) Newer photos, from 2000 on, are much easier to find and easier to make reprints out of because they're digital. You still need to know what issue the photo was in, however. I recently had a call from a woman who wanted a picture of a moose. I asked her what issue it was in and she didn't know. "It was drooling," she said.

That doesn't help much, since most moose drool.

The reason you need to know the issue is because old photos are sorted by date, not subject. We don't just have a big moose file, for example.

Lastly, none of this is free.

It takes time and money to make reprints and copies. We charge a fee, but it's a nominal one. Good luck with your research. We wish you well.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.