ProQuest Provides New Solution for Historical Study of American Southwest
ANN ARBOR, MI, June 2, 2014 – For the first time, researchers will have online access to the digital archive of the Austin American Statesman as ProQuest adds the acclaimed daily to its Historical Newspapers collection. As the leading newspaper in the state capital of Austin and central Texas, the historical Austin American Statesman provides researchers with a unique, regional perspective on the political, economic, cultural, and social landscape of Texas and the American Southwest from the late 19th through the 20th century.
“Newspapers provide researchers with a first-hand look into history,” said Scott Shultz, publisher, ProQuest newspapers. “ProQuest’s development of a digital archive of the Austin American Statesman will make the history of this very important region much more accessible, powering superior research outcomes.”
The Austin American Statesman archive includes searchable, full text coverage from the origin of the paper in 1871 as the Democratic Statesman, which was a semi-official organ of the state executive committee of the Democratic Party. It provides in-depth and acclaimed reporting on Texas’ reconstruction period, the development of Austin as a primary railroad hub of the American southwest, the founding and development of the University of Texas, the Austin Dam collapse and the evolution of Austin as the state capital.
Users can access editions of the Austin American Statesman cover to cover, exploring beyond articles to material that provides context and texture of the period, including advertisements, obituaries, editorials, cartoons, and photographs.
The Austin American Statesman archive is the latest addition to the ProQuest Historical Newspaper program that enables researchers to explore the complete runs of acclaimed regional, national and international papers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, The Globe and Mail, The Times of India. All of these can be searched with pinpoint accuracy along with the archive’s growing specialty collections – Chinese historical newspapers, Black historical newspapers, and American Jewish newspapers – that provide unique insights into the history of unique geographic and ethnic populations.
ProQuest is a global leader in digitizing historical and aggregating peer-reviewed scholarly content across disciplines, with an unrivaled repository of knowledge that dates from the 1600s. Through its information solutions and technological infrastructure, ProQuest provides researchers with the ability to cross-search the news with massive deep-web databases of scholarly journals, ebooks, news content, reports and working papers, streamlining steps and improving outcomes.
About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company’s products are a gateway to the world’s knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information.
The company’s cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students and researchers through the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Dialog®, ebrary®, EBL® and Serials Solutions® businesses – and notable research tools such as the Summon® discovery service, the RefWorks® Flow™ collaboration platform, the Pivot™ research development tool and the Intota™ library services platform. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.