The Leader makes every effort to maintain an effective and useful record of its past editions; however a lot has happened in 125 years. Several years are missing and The Leader does not not have a microfilm reader available for public use. Early editions were largely destroyed due to water and termite damage and most of the copies available today are post 1980. Digital archives are virtually non-existent. What we do have digitally is not available in a searchable database. So our "digital archives" simply consist of PDF files of all pages of a particular issue in the past few years. These are not available for public perusal and all staff searches require a date. In other words, without being able to search by key word or phrase or name, we have to look through these based on date, virtually by hand.

However, our friends at the Tipton County Library in Covington have a good database and welcome visitors who are doing research from family genealogy to land history and more.

The library has copies of an older newspaper, the Covington-Tipton County Weekly, on file from 1875-1890. Miscellaneous copies of The Covington Leader (some are missing) exist until the year 1919. From 1920-current, the library has all editions on microfilm and has a microfilm reader available for public use. The exception is the most current editions; archives typically run about six months behind the current date. For archives within the last six months, visit The Leader's office.

The library, like The Leader, does not have a digital archive with a database searchable by words or phrases. All searches involve manually going through editions by date. The microfilm reader may speed up the process.

Library officials also noted that people who are out of the area may also visit the Tennessee State Library in Nashville. All microfilm comes to Covington by way of the State Library and the archive there should be consistent with what is on file in Covington.

For more information about the Tipton County Library, visit http://www.covingtontn.com/Departments/Library.htm or contact the Covington library at 901-476-8289.