Allow Me To Wax Poetic: Newspaperarchive.com

Of all the developments on the world wide web, none has captured my imagination more than a site called Newspaperarchive. For a relatively nominal sum, I've purchased access to an ever-growing collection of historic newspapers from across the world, though most are U.S. publications. The coverage on a state-by-state basis is spotty, but the collection overall covers a vast period, and the news wires (Associated Press, United Press International, etc.) are all represented. If you're interested in a popular criminal case, your family genealogy, the events that took place on your birthday, the Titanic disaster, or what have you, you'll have to sign up yourself.

Also for the microfilm-impaired, other sites on the internet offer access to historic newspapers, though none even come close to offering the breadth of selections available on Newspaperarchive. The Washington Post has a searchable archive that charges on a per-article basis as does the New York Times. The Oklahoman and the Toronto Star offer cheap day passes. The Hartford Courant has an on-line archive that goes back to 1764; articles are available for $3.95 each. Several state historical organizations are starting to digitize some newspapers, notably Colorado, though the coverage is still spotty in most cases. Proquest, which is basically only available to university students, also has a searchable archive of several historic newspapers: The New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and others. But if you're not a university student, you're out of luck: Proquest wanted well over $1,000 from me for a year-long subscription. Unless my lucky numbers come up, Proquest will forever remain on my Christmas list.

Of course, there's always Lexis-Nexis, but it is also outrageously expensive and its newspaper collection only goes back a couple of decades, and having once been a slave of this evil corporate conglomerate for the longest year of my life, I cannot in good faith recommend its employment.

To my great joy, I recently learned that the U.S. government is finally doing something worthwhile with my tax dollars. It was recently announced that in 2006, the Library of Congress will unveil a free searchable historic newspaper database. I haven't been able to find out what titles it will offer, and it might be hard to match the ease of use of the Newspaperarchive site. When I found out more information, I'll happily share it. In the meantime, nothing delights me more than killing an afternoon on Newspaperarchive running searches like "bloody murder" and "awful crime" to see what pops up.

Comments

[Ron Franscell]

From http://underthenews.blogspot.com ....

Perhaps you have wondered, like me, why New Orleans' newspaper is the Times-Picayune ... especially since the word picayune means "of little importance or value." Or maybe you haven't.

But, frankly, if I worked for a newspaper whose flag declared boldly it had little importance or value, I'd want to investigate further. So I went in search of an answer, and here's what I found, courtesy of word-maven Michael Quinion:

"An odd name for a newspaper, you may feel. But when its precursor, the New Orleans Picayune, began life on 25 January 1837, the main sense of the word was that of a small coin. It was at first applied in Florida and Louisiana to the Spanish half-real, worth just over six cents; in the early nineteenth century it was transferred to the US five-cent piece. The proprietors of the new newspaper gave it that name because that’s what a copy cost.

"The Beeville Bee-Picayune in Texas took its name from the New Orleans newspaper more than a century ago as a sort of homage. Could this be true also of other journals that include the word in their titles? The town of Picayune, Mississippi, was given its name by Eliza Jane Poitevent Nicholson, the owner and publisher of the New Orleans Daily Picayune, who grew up in nearby Pearlington.

"Scholars are less than totally certain about where the word came from, though the immediate origin is the French picaillon for an old copper coin of Savoy (in modern French, picaillons is a slangy term for money). In turn that derived from Provençal picaioun. Here the trail peters out, but that might have been taken from Italian piccolo, little or small, or more probably from Provençal piquar, to clink or sound."

[Zoe Brown]

hi,
I was hoping someone might be able to help me with a problem i'm having, i'm trying to find information on a court case in Boston in the late 1920's. It was a rape case against 2 men but when the jury found out that she had a tattoo, the case was dropped as she was said to be guilty of contributary negligence. I am looking for this info for my disertation which is on tattoo's so it will be an excellent case study! I would greatly appreciate any help!
Thankyou
Zoe

[floydj]

hey there!
just visiting your wonderful, wonderful site again. it is amazing how much information there is here!

wondering if you have any idea how many people purchase true crime books each year. i'm trying to get a handle on the numbers and i'm having the darndest time. thought it would be easy to pin down, but it's not.

if you have any thoughts or a referral to a location online that might be able to help me pin down some sales numbers, i'd much appreciate it.

keep up the good work!

JFlo