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Trove of Americana gifted to library now available

readexsamplesThanks to a major gift, the Northwestern community now has access to the contents of the Archive of Americana collection, a product of Readex, a division of NewsBank, a publication repository. The gift comes through Northwestern life trustee Daniel S. Jones, who is president of NewsBank.

Including materials from as wide a range as 1792 to 2008, this full-text database gathers U.S. newspapers, books, broadsides, ephemera, and U.S. government publications. It comprises tens of millions of pages of primary documents that can be searched across collections, including sets of African American, Hispanic American and Caribbean newspapers as well as collection of imprints on topics such as slavery and the Civil War.

“The generous donation of this resource gives our community of researchers a powerful new way to study U.S. history and culture,” said Harriet Lightman, head of Northwestern Libraries Research and Learning Services. “There are so many wonderful discoveries waiting to happen in this rich, unique collection.”

To learn more about the contents of the collection, and what is available to our community, visit the Libraries’ Readex Research Guide.