In Mr Shea's case, I did not have access to actual arrests records.
The Libriarian got me the newspaper articles concerning Shea. I am assuming they were on micro fish as she got them fairly fast, but did not ask. This was in 2000.

When Larry and I researched the Reno Card Room chips back in 2001, both Reno newspapers were on micro fish but no search engine. We spent hours in the archives searching the fish. We also spent a lot of time at Reno library going thru criss cross directories. They are wonderful for matching names with addresses.

I have spent many hours over the years, in LV libraries, Historical Socities, and UNLV Special Collections reseaerching NV chips and their histories. I once called everyone in the USA with a certain last name. I was trying to put a casino name to a Scrown delivered to Reno. If I remember right there was less than 100 that had that name. Roughly 3/4 of them were related and had no knowledge of my guy. What are the odds of that? I actually talked to all but one on the list. I always wondered if the one I could not find was my guy!

All of that said:
Today almost everything in the world is on the internet. More and more newspaper archives come on the net every day. More and more Data bases come available.
Some are free and some are pay to search. I am lucky enough to have a friend of the hobby, that has access and the knowledge on how to search these archives.

I am totaly in awe of what he finds and the info that can be found in a short amount of time.

If someone has the thrist for history, it should be and can be quenched.