Primary Research

newspapers & magazines • unpublished manuscripts • government documents • Digital Philadelphia

Newspapers & Magazines

If you are a historian on training wheels, you might make your first foray into primary research using old newspapers and magazines. They are wonderful for transporting you back to the past; you can know the events and concerns of people on any given day. Old newspapers and (a few) magazines are increasingly indexed or even available full-text on electronic databases.

Newspapers

Drexel's library has a nice overview of its newspaper resources here. Most of the electronic news databases just go back to the 1980s or 1990s, which counts as history only for dragons in diapers, but you have a few options, particularly if you call on your friend, the Free Library.

Drexel's databases

• New York Times Historical (1851-present)
• AP Images (1826-)
• Lexis Nexis Academic (mostly new-ish history)

Index? There aren't so many good indexes for old newspapers, so a very good trick is to look up events in the New York Times Historical or other fully digitized newspaper; if you can find even a tiny reference, take note of the date and look it up in a Philadelphia newspaper.

Free Library of Philadelphia databases
The best place to find electronic (and other) historical Philadelphia newspapers is at the Free Library--with resources available only from inside a library.

• Early American Newspapers, 1690-1876
• National Newspaper Index
• Pennsylvania Historical Newspapers
• Philadelphia Press, 1857-1920
• Newsbank Retrospective, 1970-1991

National Archives databases

• Footnote.com
• Ancestry.com

From inside of the National Archives, Mid-Atlantic (9th & Chestnut), you may access these subscription databases, both of which have a range of (mostly smaller) newspapers.

Library of Congress

Chronicling America
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/

The Library of Congress has embarked on a large project to digitize newspapers from around the country. So far, the locations are limited to a few states (not Pennsylvania) and two decades (1890-1910), which means you'll have to read about Philadelphia as others reported about it (or, goodness' sake, do research on another subject).

The website also has a very helpful list of all known US newspapers since 1690.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

The Historical Society does not have many electronic newspaper sources, but they have a large microfilm collection. The easiest way to see a wide selection: Go to HSP's card catalog; do a title search for "Philadelphia Inquirer"; open one of the resulting entries and click on the Subject link "Philadelphia (Pa.)--Newspapers." (It's not as neat and tidy to search directly for Philadelphia newspapers.)

Google News Archives
http://news.google.com/archivesearch

The News Archives is one of Google's newer projects, and it's not so far along just yet.

Magazines

Finding magazines
Neither Drexel nor the Free Library subscribes to the American Periodical Series electronic database, which is very helpful for providing old magazine articles (up to 1935). Unless you have access to another library that subscribes to it, you'll have to search the old-fashioned way (which might include the microfilm version of the American Periodical Series).

A couple of classic indices and good places to start:

• Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature

Drexel has the electronic version (Readers' Guide Retrospective), which covers the United States from 1890 to 1982. It's listed under Drexel's electronic databases.

• Poole's Guide to Periodical Literature

The Free Library has the print version of this index, which covers most of the nineteenth-century United States.

• Other

There are many specialized periodicals indexes, and you should check library catalogs for the subject term "periodical indexes" to see what is available.

Getting the Articles
Magazine articles are not yet as easily obtainable on-line as newspapers, but don't forget that print copies work, too! If Drexel doesn't have the magazine, you can order articles through the library's Interlibrary Loan service (it's not just for books anymore).

Drexel has one magazine available fully on-line:
• Nation (weekly news & opinion since 1865)