The Sanborn maps. Ask any historian of early American history “what’s a Sanborn map?” and you’re likely to receive an earful. The maps, which cover American cities decade-by-decade, chart the rapid change and growth of this country’s urban areas in a way matched by few other primary sources.  The digitized versions of Sanborn maps have been used by historians for years. However, there exists a vital tool which has not been accessible in an integrated(read more)

As we head into the last quarter of 2023, we’ve been getting inquiries from researchers about what is “exclusive” to Paratext’s Eight Centuries. As a response, we’re reaching back into our blog archive to republish some posts on sources and methodologies that remain just as relevant today as when they were first posted. This article, originally published in September 2018, addresses one of the key central genre of source exclusive to Eight Centuries: the(read more)

As we head into the last quarter of 2023, we’ve been getting inquiries from researchers about what is “exclusive” to Paratext’s Eight Centuries. As a response, we’re reaching back into our blog archive to republish some posts on sources and methodologies that remain just as relevant today as when they were first posted. This article, originally published in August 2018, looks at a sometimes-overlooked genre of historical source: political cartoons. Though(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce a new source available to your patrons. Now ready to search in Eight Centuries: the Tate Collection. Founded in 1897 and originally named the National Gallery of British Art, the Tate has since grown into a four gallery institution spread across the UK, from London to Liverpool and Cornwall. The Tate Collection in Eight Centuries contains records for the nearly 70,000 objects that comprise the holdings of the museum. Links to the Tate catalog in each record(read more)

Another recent addition to Eight Centuries is now ready to search by your patrons: the Art Institute of Chicago Catalog. Founded in 1879, the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the premier art institutions in the United States. The catalog searchable in Eight Centuries contains over 120,000 records describing artworks from as far back as the ancient world and as recent as the contemporary period. Links to catalog entries on the Art Institute website are provided, which include full images(read more)

Another recent addition to Eight Centuries is now ready to search by your patrons: records of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access Collection. Founded in 1870 in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest art museums in the world with a collection stretching over 5,000 years of world art history. The Met OA collection searchable in Eight Centuries comprises over 200 thousand records, containing links to catalog entries, as well as image links where(read more)

Paratext is happy to announce another recent addition to Eight Centuries: records of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Collection in New York City. Founded in 1929, the Museum of Modern Art is one of the world’s premier collections of art from the modern period and beyond. The MoMA collection in Eight Centuries contains records to artworks dating from the eighteenth century to the present day. The MoMA collection searchable in Eight Centuries comprises nearly 140 thousand records,(read more)

Paratext is happy to announce another recent addition to Eight Centuries: records of the Cleveland Museum of Art Collection. Founded in 1913, the Cleveland Museum of Art remains one of the premier public art institutions in the United States. The CMA’s collection stretches from the ancient British Isles and Egypt to contemporary artists working in the twenty-first century. The CMA collection searchable in Eight Centuries comprises nearly 64 thousand records, containing links to(read more)

Paratext is happy to announce another recent addition to Eight Centuries: the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). A database founded in 2006 and maintained by a consortium of United States and European libraries and academies, the BHL operates as an Open Source resource for the biological research community. The BHL data contained in Eight Centuries comprises over 166 thousand records to biology texts ranging from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Within the Biodiversity(read more)

Over the last few months, we at Paratext have been busily adding new data to our products to make them even more useful to your researchers and students. That’s why, we are happy to announce another recent addition to United States Masterfile: Founders Online. A joint project between the National Archives National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and the University of Virginia Press, Founders Online is a database of the writings and correspondence of John Adams,(read more)

Data from the Mapping Early American Elections project is now available to search in Eight Centuries. A project completed by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and made available for public use, Mapping Early American Elections (MEAE) is a database of United States election results from 1787 to 1825. The nearly 13 thousand MEAE records in Eight Centuries link to fully mapped election results available on the project’s website. Within(read more)

Paratext is happy to announce another recent addition to U.S. Documents Masterfile: the Bibliographic Metadata of the Foreign Relations of the United States Series. A publication of the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series is the official record of U.S. foreign policy going back to 1861. Originally contained in 500 physical volumes, the digital version available through U.S. Documents Masterfile links to full text online(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce two new sources now available to search in U.S. Documents Masterfile: the Compilation of Presidential Documents collection and the U.S. Geological Survey Publications Warehouse index. The Compilation of Presidential Documents is an ongoing collection of documents going back to 1993 pertaining to the day-to-day activities of the office of the President of the United States. Published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records(read more)

In 2021 we added an entirely new feature for subscribers of multiple products: Cross Search. This feature allows easy instant searching of a search term across Eight Centuries, U.S. Documents Masterfile, and Reference Universe. To celebrate this exciting new feature, we’re looking back at different sources now easily accessible across products via Cross Search. Today: the Atlantic Monthly historical index available to search in 8C. With apologies to the late columnist Syd Harris(read more)

Paratext is proud to announce that we've added all pre-1961 British National Bibliography content to Eight Centuries. Originally founded by the British Museum and currently supported by the British Library, the British National Bibliography has continuously compiled the publishing output of Great Britain since its creation in 1949. Users can now search 158,000 records to magazines, books, and newspapers — some dating as far back as the 14th century. The BNB content embraces(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce that records from the Modernist Journals Project is now accessible via Eight Centuries. The Modernist Journals Project (MJP) is joint cataloging and digitizing venture between Brown University and the University of Tulsa which comprises records of journal output of the modernist literary period from 1890 to 1922. The MJP adds nearly ten thousand new periodical content records to Eight Centuries. Furthermore, in addition to the records themselves, MJP(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce that additional content from Adam Matthew is now accessible via Eight Centuries.   Adam Matthew, an imprint of SAGE, is an award-winning publisher of digital primary source collections for the humanities and social sciences, covering subject areas from medieval family life to 20th-century history and culture.   Nearly 40,000 links from 11 collections have been added to Eight Century’s Image/Media section, broadening research for all(read more)

This is post continues our series exploring the oddest, most out-there corners of the history of science to be found in the Catalogue of Scientific Papers and other similar sources in Eight Centuries. Those unfamiliar with this fascinating source from the Royal Society should check out our description of the CSP. I recently read this post about incredibly bad smells in the New York Time’s “Good Question” series (written by the always-great Randall Munroe).1 In the post, he(read more)

Today we continue our series exploring the most out-of-the-way corners of the history of science to be found in the Catalogue of Scientific Papers. Those unfamiliar with this fascinating source from the Royal Society should check out our description of the CSP. The first aerial photographs date from long before powered flight. Though we capture such pictures relatively easily using satellites and drones nowadays, people began taking photos from dizzying heights back when hydrogen balloons(read more)

This is the first post in a series exploring the most out-of-the-way corners of the history of science to be found in the Catalogue of Scientific Papers. Those unfamiliar with this fascinating source from the Royal Society should check out our description of the CSP. This post is about a device that was everywhere in retail and business until roughly the 1970s, at which point it quietly dropped out of the public eye. I’m talking about the mechanical calculator called the Comptometer.(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce the addition of two Open Access resources which join the millions of proprietary primary source records in the Eight Centuries database: Documenting the American South and Chronicling America.   These two sources add over 150,000 entirely new records, with thousands of links to high quality full text and metadata.   Documenting the American South, a project of the University of North Carolina, makes digitized content from the UNC Library(read more)

“[…] what a spot of mud on your name—I was going to say on your reign—is this abominable Dreyfus affair! A council of war, under order, has just dared to acquit Esterhazy, a great blow to all truth, all justice. And it is finished, France has this stain on her cheek, History will write that it was under your presidency that such a social crime could be committed.” –Section from “J’Accuse…!,” open letter from Émile Zola to(read more)

Whirl up, sea— Whirl your pointed pines, Splash your great pines On our rocks, Hurl your green over us— Cover us with your pools of fir. “Oread,” Hilda “H.D.” Doolittle, 1914     This remains poet Hilda Doolittle’s (1886 – 1961) most famous piece of work. It is a wonderful example of the Modernist poetical school of Imagism: an effort to pare down poetry to the essentials of imagery and metaphor.1 In this case,(read more)

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC recently named Lonnie G. Bunch III as its fourteenth Secretary, the first African American to hold the position. In celebration of this occasion, let’s explore the beginnings of the Smithsonian.   The Smithsonian Institution is a remarkable institution. Founded in 1846 and sometimes called “the nation’s attic,” the institution brings millions of visitors in contact with science and history each year. Scholars(read more)

We recently augmented 19th Century Masterfile with data from the Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General’s Office. This index—and the library that spawned it—were largely the work of one incredible surgeon and bibliophile: Dr. John Shaw Billings.   We’ve all, while researching, thought to ourselves, “I sure wish the library had this particular book,” or lamented, “It sure would be great if this library’s collection was(read more)

Research often takes us in weird directions whether you are a scholar completing a chapter for a book, a student working on a project for class … or an editor checking sources for a piece of copy. Coming across the unexpected is one of the best parts of the process, and an experience I went through recently. –Ed. In a recent blog post, I mentioned that ephemeral common knowledge is one of the hardest things to preserve since it is never considered important enough to record(read more)

Exploring the Register of Debates and the Congressional Globe… Today we will look at two mainstays of early Congressional reporting: the Register of Debates and the Congressional Globe. Both dominated the journalistic world of Congress and politics in the decades before the Government Printing Office began producing its official account of Congress—the Congressional Record—in 1873. And because the two overlapped in coverage, many assumed they were partisan rivals. But(read more)

Periodical indexes are not often considered valuable source material unto themselves. There is a tendency to see them simply as neutral orderings of objective reality. After all, how can a list of sources be anything more than a means to more (and better) sources? How can a list of sources contain an agenda or narrative? Quite well, it would seem. As curated lists of source material, indexes are susceptible to internal biases and narratives as least as much as the editorial cartoons we(read more)

The primary source is the historian’s most prized asset. However, sources taken on their own are not necessarily interesting; it is how the researcher can see in them and through them, placing them in context to piece together historical narrative, that makes them intriguing. When used effectively, sources can truly be windows into history, and—like windows—they can be clear, dirty, foggy, even distorted and deceptive. Political cartoons are an example of a relatively(read more)

Exploring the NYPL Public Domain Collection… Today we will look at the New York Public Library’s Public Domain Collection. The NYPL recently made approximately 190,000 digitized public domain items from their special collections available online for unrestricted use. Why does the NYPL have such a large library of digitized material? Why do they have such a large special collection at all? To answer these questions, we have explore  the genesis of the NYPL collection in(read more)

Exploring the Farmers’ Bulletin… Our “Exploring” series continues with the Farmers’ Bulletin, a publication from the United States Department of Agriculture that first appeared in 1889. For over a century, the Bulletin has disseminated the latest research out of Agricultural Experiment Stations across the country with the aim of leading farmers to bigger crop yields and more rewarding home lives. Persuit of this goal has sometimes led the Bulletin to publish(read more)

Exploring Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates... At Paratext, historical sources—primary, secondary, and tertiary—are our business. Not all historical sources are immediately intuitive, and many hide fascinating stories. This is the first post in our “Exploring” blog series, which will delve into various useful sources available to researchers and scholars at all levels. We address issues of historical context, illuminate methods of use, and parse out biases(read more)

356 years after The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge held their first 'learned society' meeting in 1660, Paratext announces the addition of The Society's International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, 1901-1914 to 19th Century Masterfile: 1106-1930. This is the continuation of the monumental Catalogue of Scientific Papers 1800-1900, which Paratext deployed in 2012.   The International Catalogue is the largest single editorial(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce that extensive content from Adam Matthew is now accessible via 19th Century Masterfile: 1106-1930. Adam Matthew, an imprint of SAGE, is an award-winning publisher of digital primary source collections for the humanities and social sciences, covering subject areas from medieval family life to 20th-century history and culture. Nearly 100,000 links from 33 collections are being added to 19th Century Masterfile’s Image/Media section, broadening research(read more)

The Granite Monthly was a New Hampshire publication that covered news, issues of import to the society of the time and general interest articles. It now joins over 70 other valuable primary source indexes that enjoy easier discovery with one searchbox in 19th Century Masterfile. The Granite Monthly file in 19th Century Masterfile contains nearly 20,000 primary source records from 1877-1930.  Most of these citations conveniently include links(read more)

The Royal Society is the oldest scientific academy still in existence, having begun in the 17th century with the regular meetings of natural philosophers interested in promoting knowledge of the natural world through observation and experiment. Paratext is pleased to announce that more than 6,000 links to the full text of the Royal Society Journals are now included in 19th Century Masterfile. The journals make up part of the more than 1,500 titles indexed within(read more)

19th Century Masterfile has always been the ‘due diligence’ resource for historians. Its usefulness is now expanded to cover works in both technology and agricultural science. To that end, Paratext has significantly enhanced the scope and research value of 19th Century Masterfile for historical agricultural studies through the addition of the Index to Farmers’ Bulletin, 1889-1930. The Farmers’ Bulletin was for many years one of the most(read more)