On Trial

The Ross Pendergraft Library is now offering two new database trials until June 24th, 2017.  This is your opportunity to sample collections under consideration for purchase by the library.  Send your feedback to Ask A Librarian or if you are faculty, contact your subject liaison to voice your praise, concern, or indifference to the products listed below.

American Periodical Series

This ProQuest database contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children’s and women’s magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.   Over 1,800 titles are indexed including Harper’s Bazaar, Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine, America’s first scientific journal, Medical Repository.  It also includes historic issues of popular magazines like Vanity Fair as well as The Dial, Puck, and McClure’s.

The cover of the first magazine published in North America

The collection includes 89 journals from 1740 to 1800, covering America’s colonial past and establishment as an independent country.  Notable pieces include the serialization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the writings of Edgar Allan Poe as contributed to the Southern Literary Messenger, and Nathanial Hawthorne’s first stories in the New England Magazine.

The cover of The Dial with the first published edition of T.S. Eliot's the Wasteland

The database goes further than most by including the digitized images of periodical pages.  Researchers can study the illustrations, typography, and advertisements.

The invention of the emoticon, 1881

In addition to full text searching, issues can be browsed visually, enabling the viewer to scan pages quickly to get a snapshot in time from first page to last.  Search within individual publications, issues, and across the entire collection.

A screenshot of browsing Puck magazine, a popular political cartoon serial from the 1800s.

Students and faculty hunting for primary source material relating to American history will hit pay dirt with the American Periodical Series.

New York Times with Index

The New York Times has published “all the news that’s fit to print” since 1851.  This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.  Search and find full-text articles up until 2013 without pouring over the library’s paper indexes and microfilm.

Read articles, editorials, advertisements and cartoons from the last 160 years in digital format.  Each page can be clearly read as though you were holding it up to your very own monocle.

Sinking of the Titanic announced

Browse an issue by specific date or use advanced searching to find articles by specific authors, keywords, or location and subject.  Travel back to a time when big fonts meant big news.

Nixon resigns -- headline from New York Times, 1974

If you enjoy the modern conveniences of hunting down primary resources from the comfort of your own sitting room, then please send a telegram or carrier pigeon to Ask A Librarian posthaste.  We rely on your recommendations to help us make tough decisions over which databases to keep, cancel, or purchase.  Remember, you have until June 24th until the trial expires, so send us your feedback soon.