For those interested in cultural and social history, one of the most invaluable resources made available through the University of Illinois Library are the historical newspaper databases. Containing the decade-spanning backfiles of such major newspapers as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune, these databases provide readers the opportunity to envision what it might have been like to live during a certain era and experience world-changing events as they were initially recorded. Continue reading “Reading the Women’s Pages”
Tag: digital collections
New Digital Collections for Fall, 2022
What’s Missing from this Digital Collection?
Many of our digital collections were created from microfilm surrogates, which is to say that the original print collection was at some point microfilmed (mostly in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s) for sale to libraries. Our own library bought many of these microfilm collections. Because it’s so much less expensive to digitize from microfilm (than from print originals), and because digitizing from microfilm spares those print originals from unnecessary wear and tear, many of our digital collections were created from these microfilm surrogates. You might be wondering how to determine whether a collection was digitized from microfilm. One good sign is if the documents in the collection are displayed in black-and-white (especially low bit-depth black-and-white) rather than color. Collections digitized directly from original print documents will usually display those documents in color. For example, the following: Continue reading “What’s Missing from this Digital Collection?”
6 New Digital Collections
Early Modern England: Society, Culture, and Everyday Life, 1500-1700
Published and unpublished sources selected for their capacity to document the history of everyday life. Sources include court records, administrative records, petitions, wills, inventories, tax records, financial documents, military records, church records, memoirs, diaries, unpublished essays, commonplace books, printed broadsides, and printed books. Also included are 164 objects, such as clothing, jewelry, and home furnishings. The collection is organized around twenty themes: Family life; Birth, marriage, death; Health and medicine; Land and property; Possessions; Work and employment; Poverty; Agriculture; Finance; Trade and economics; Law and order; Politics and government; Foreign affairs; War; Monarchy; Religion; Scholarship, science, and the humanities; Arts, literature, and culture; Travel; and Women’s history. In addition to these themes, documents can be browsed by region and date of creation. Continue reading “6 New Digital Collections”
New Digital Collections for Fall 2021
Historical Newspapers
ProQuest Historical Austin American Statesman
The ProQuest Historical Austin American Statesman comprises the following Austin, Texas newspaper files: Continue reading “New Digital Collections for Fall 2021”
New Collection: Advertising America
Digitized selections from the J. Walter Thompson Company Archives at Duke University. Although the archive has not been digitized in its entirety, the size of the digitized portion is nevertheless enormous. The J. Walter Thompson Company was one of the most important American advertising agencies of the twentieth century, and this digital collection documents its work in sixteen industries: