You can search the Michigan Citizen by date and by keyword.
Any Date is used by default. You have the option to include a date or date range when searching. For all date options, you can enter a year and get results for that year only, or a month and year combination to get results for that month and year.
On this date - Choose a specific date to search on
After this date - Choose a date and retrieve results after that date
Before this date - Choose a date and retrieve results before that date
Date range - Choose a date range
Keyword searches work great on their own, but there are additional options to help expand or refine your search results.
Use quotes around a phrase to search for that exact phrase, for example, use "Coleman Young".
Use wildcards in your search to help retrieve a greater range of results. There are two options for wildcard searching:
Example: The search term watch* may return pages containing the terms watch, watches, or watching.
Example: The search term w?tch may return pages containing the terms witch or watch.
You have the option to use boolean operators in your search. Boolean operators must be capitalized to work correctly
Example: hockey AND Detroit - will return pages that include the terms hockey and Detroit. If a page contains one but not the other, it will not appear in your results.
Example: hockey OR Detroit - will return pages that include the terms hockey or Detroit. If a page contains one but not the other, it will still appear in your results.
Example: hockey NOT Detroit -- will return pages that include the term hockey but not the term Detroit.
These operators may be used in conjunction with each other. They can also be used with phrases in quotes (example: "black leader*" AND NAACP).
Sometimes you may notice a page containing terms you know you searched for but were not highlighted, or even false matches.
Search looks at text created using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). OCR software "reads" the page images and makes a best guess at identifying the letters and words on a page. Even the best quality OCR usually contains an error or two per page. While this does not usually cause significant problems with searching, newspapers can sometimes have stray marks or blurred characters that result in suboptimal OCR and strange search results. This is especially common near headers, in classified ads where text is small and close together, and in advertisements.
If you notice OCR errors that are negatively affecting your search experience, you can notify us by using the Report Problem link on the page viewer.
Please note that the digital images of Michigan Citizen reflect the appearance and condition of the original microfilm donated to the Bentley Historical Library in 2015. The original microfilm represents the years 1978 to 1994 of Michigan Citizen.
The issue date should match the date stated on the front page. If you see examples where this is not the case, please let us know!
You may come across a newspaper whose date metadata doesn’t appear to match the date on one or more pages in the newspaper. There may be other examples of errors such as this that we will not be able to correct.