Database of the Week

Having a difficult time choosing a research topic for your English, History, Humanities, or Sociology class? Why not give our Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers database a try?

Discover topics dating from 1690 to 2000. Hundreds of topics can be browsed or searched and are divided in to three categories. The three categories are “Government, Military, and Political Events,” “Social and Cultural Issues,” and “Discoveries, Inventions, and Firsts.” They are then divided into eras starting with the “Colonial Era” and ending with the “Globalization and Information Age.”

Topics range from the “Boston Massacre” to the “World’s Fair and the First American Olympics” to “Pong” and the invention of video games. An overview for each entry is provided as well as links to PDF files of related newspaper articles. The article links show an actual picture of the newspaper article or sometimes the full page where the story first appeared.

 It’s incredible to look at articles that date 200 to 300 years back! This database can be accessed from the SWC Library Articles and Database page.

If you love the history of baseball, here’s a great example!

Review by Nate Martin, SWC Librarian