ProQuest Expands Historical Newspaper™ Collection with Specialty and Regional Titles
The world's largest digital newspaper archive is expanding to provide researchers with access to unique, targeted perspectives on the news as ProQuest digitizes collections of historic American Jewish and regional newspapers. The papers, dating from 1841 and covering regions such as Boston, the Ohio valley and New York City will be added to ProQuest's Historical Newspaper collection, a seminal source of primary research for all types of users.
"Our customers are seeing increased use of, and demand for newspaper content because of its ability to satisfy so many different research needs - from genealogy to academics," said Rod Gauvin, ProQuest senior vice president, publishing. "We're aggressively expanding the Historical Newspapers collection so that all types of libraries can turn to this resource to effectively serve their users. That means adding very unique papers, not just major news outlets. We're building a collection that gets deeper and more nuanced every year."
ProQuest is developing a new area of coverage with the digitization of three important American Jewish newspapers. Available now are The Jewish Advocate and The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger. The Jewish Advocate is the oldest, continuously-circulating Jewish newspaper in America. A Boston-based weekly that was an essential information source to Jewish homes throughout New England, its content is a unique resource for researchers for its early recognition of the danger Hitler's rise to power posed for Jewish people and the efforts organizations took to support Jewish refugees. The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger dates from 1857 and provides a close look at the Jewish abolitionist movement in America before and during the Civil War. Both papers also provide a look at the evolution of religion over the course of 100 years. Later this year, ProQuest will begin adding the Jewish Exponent (years 1887 through 1990). Digitization of the Jerusalem Post (1932 through 1988) will add an international complement.
Regional coverage in Historical Newspapers expands with Newsday (years 1940 through 1984), which is best known for its local coverage of New York's Long Island area post World War II, and Gannett's Cincinnati Enquirer (1841 through 1922), a key newspaper covering the high growth period of the Ohio River Valley region.
ProQuestHistorical Newspapers™ began with digital archives of a handful of major American newspapers and has grown to encompass more than 20 dailies from around the world. Collections such as Historical Black Newspapers™ and the growing number of regional papers enable researchers to conduct deep dives on specific topics and also to compare multiple perspectives of the same events. The archive is continually growing and now encompasses more than 30 million pages.
Now available on the ProQuest® unified platform, ProQuest Historical Newspapers can be cross-searched with a library's entire ProQuest collection. Researchers can work with their newspaper discoveries using the platform's sophisticated content management tools that enable them to share, create, collaborate and innovate.
For more information, visit www.proquest.com.
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