| By Sydney Fairman |
As part of a historic partnership between Gale and the American Antiquarian Society, American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society offers a highly comprehensive documentary history of the American experience spanning four centuries with multiple perspectives on the thought, culture, and society of North America.
Read why Library Journal calls American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society, “a valuable, comprehensive, and easy-to-use resource” for primary source research:
Content
“Founded in 1812, the AAS holds the ‘single largest collection’ of materials published through 1876, including books, magazines, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, music, and artwork… Gale presents short-lived and hard-to-find selections alongside well-known and long-established titles. While the majority are in English, additional tongues include German, French, Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish, Welsh, Italian, Portuguese, Armenian, Assamese, Burmese, Dutch, Latin, Tamil, Zulu, and a number of Indigenous languages. The oldest work in the collection is the 1684 Acta Eruditorum.”
Usability
“The advanced search page provides a richer set of features: searching the entire document or by keywords, document title, author/creator, publication title, place of publication, issue number, start page, or document number… A handy ‘keywords in context’ option opens a pop-up window that previews the section in which the search term appears. Patrons can also search within, refine, or analyze results using term clusters and frequency graphs. Newspaper articles are presented as high-quality scans. Relevant keywords are highlighted, making it easier to zoom in on sections of interest. Citations for publications and individual articles are available.”
Pricing
“Institutions holding two or more Gale Primary Source collections receive complimentary access to the Gale Primary Sources cross-search platform, which permits discovery of connections among other archival collections published by Gale. Gale is offering free access to the six million–plus pages that comprise American Historical Periodicals, Series 1–5 to any U.S. or Canadian institution that owns at least one Gale Primary Sources archive.”
The Verdict
“A valuable, comprehensive, and easy-to-use resource for primary source research on American culture and thought.”