Digital Collections: Social Sciences

The Social Issues Collection from the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection
"An ongoing database of historial images from the Western United States and the Pacific Northwest region. The collection covers political and social topics such as women's issues, labor and government, as well as ethnic groups." (from web site)

American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library (from the Library of Congress) -Topic Social Sciences
"American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections."(from website)

History of Advertising

• Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920 from Duke University
  "A database of over 9,000 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture, especially after the American Civil War, and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States. The project organizes the materials into eleven categories, including advertising cookbooks, early Lux ads, J. Walter Thompson Company "house ads" and tobacco promotions, and includes transcriptions of the title pages and tables of contents/indexes for the Early Advertising Publications and the Nicole DiBona Peterson Advertising Cookbook categories; descriptive essays for each category; and Boolean searching within each category as well as general searching across all categories. The project, a collaboration between the Digital Scriptorium and the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, was a 1998 Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition winner, and was supported in part by a grant from that program." (from web site)

• Ad*Access from Duke University
  An image database of over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Covering five categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II - Ad*Access provides a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies preserved in one advertising collection at Duke University. The site is browsable and searchable in a variety of ways, including complex searching with Boolean operators. Brief histories of the industries and timelines of world and national events help put the ads in the context of their times. Funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, Ad*Access represents the collaboration of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History and the Digital Scriptorium.