This database, provided by Kentucky Virtual Library and ProQuest, contains full-text newspapers and magazines from alternative, independent presses rather than the mainstream media.The database features over 670,000 articles from more than 230 publications, offering a wide range of unfettered, critical coverage of the news. All of these varied alternative and independent presses are presented in 100% full text, allowing researchers total access to regional, rural, and metropolitan perspectives on local, national, and international issues. Providing an alternative to corporate controlled media, the Alt-Press Watch database presents big stories from small sources.

Alt-Press Watch gives readers and researchers access to distinctive, thought-provoking titles, many of which cannot be found in any other database. Magazines and journals of the independent press such as Broken Pencil, which focuses on zine culture, Dissent, Solidarity’s Against the Current, The American Conservative, Left Curve, The Braille Forum and Earth First! provide in-depth coverage of a broad range of critical issues confronting contemporary society, including environment activism, disabilities, public policy, and facets of the political spectrum.  And alternative newsweeklies like Eugene Weekly, Missoula Independent, and The Village Voice offer non-mainstream perspectives on government, policy, and culture; report on local, national, and international issues; and cover hot-button topics like hunger, abuse, religion, and pop culture. The Alt-Press Watch database includes these titles and many others, providing an unmatched, multi-disciplinary resource for researchers seeking an alternative to mainstream media perspectives.

Alt-PressWatch is accessible through the Kentucky Virtual Library Proquest portal. A special username and password are required for home access; ask at any BCPL service desk for the login credentials or call the main library at 543-7675.