Subject and Course Guides: Business and Economic History: Newspapers and other Primary Sources

Historical Newspapers and Journals

America's Historical Newspapers
Searchable American newspapers enable users to explore America's past, and includes Early American Newspapers Series 1, 6 and 7, which cover dates from 1690-1922.
America's Historical Newspapers contains Early American Newspapers, which is a digital collection of colonial and early national period newspapers with over two million issues from American colonies and states from the 17th to the early 20th centuries. The web version contains digital images of each page, searchable OCR text corresponds to each image, and format to allow easy magnification.

They provide a primary source for research in history, political science, American Studies, and journalism.
American Periodicals (1740-1940)
American periodicals originating between 1740-1940, covering two centuries of American history and culture. Full images with searchable text.
Subject: U.S. history and culture
Content: American periodicals originating between 1741-1941, covering two centuries of Americana
Format: ASCII background searchable text, full image
Why it’s Unique:
• 200 years of American history
• Now complete! 7 million page images, over 1,100 periodicals
• Major events and everyday life in full image
• Interface customized for searching historical content
Economist Historical Archive (1843 to 3 years ago)
The Economist has presented global news since 1843. The Historical Archive delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue from 1843 to 3 years ago as a primary source of research covering the 19th and 20th centuries. May not be compatible with Firefox.
The Economist Historical Archive delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2008. New full-colour images, multiple search indexes, exportable financial tables and a gallery of front covers highlighting a key topic of each week - all combine to offer a primary source of research covering the 19th and 20th centuries.

Historical Black Newspapers
* Atlanta Daily World (1932-2003)
* LA Sentinel (1934-2005)
* New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
* Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002)
* Chicago Defender (1905-1975)

JSTOR
Digitized back issues of scholarly journals with a rolling date of five years ago. Covers a wide variety of disciplines.
Collections of back issues of scholarly journals in the following disciplines: arts and sciences, business, ecology and botany, and general science.
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
Hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers are captured from cover-to-cover, providing access to every article, advertisement and illustration. May not be compatible with Mozilla Firefox.
With digital facsimile images of both full pages and clipped articles for hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers and advanced searching capabilities, researchers will be able to research history in ways previously unavailable. For each issue, the newspaper is captured from cover-to-cover, providing access to every article, advertisement and illustration.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Provides full-text PDF articles from several major U.S. newspapers including: Atlanta Daily World, Chicago Defender, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Sentinel, Louisville Courier, New York Amsterdam News, New York Times, Pittsburgh Courier, and Washington Post.
Readers' Guide Retrospective:1890-1982 (H.W. Wilson)
Covers early issues of mainstream business periodicals such as Business Week, Forbes and Fortune.
This resource offers a wide range of researchers access to information about history, culture and seminal developments across nearly a century.

Primary Sources

A primary source is material that was created at the time being studied. It can be a document, a recording or an artifact. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources which usually are analysis, commentary or a filtered account of the topic.

Types of primary resources in the business & economic history fields can include:

Ledgers
Correspondence
Legal briefs
Rules, by-laws, and regulations
Financial records
Contracts
Public Relations materials (press kits, advertisements, photographs, etc.)
Statistical data

Chicago Area Special Collections

Chicago History Museum
The Newberry Library
The Newberry actively collects and preserves books, manuscripts, maps, and other printed materials related to the history and culture of Western Europe and the Americas.
Northwestern University Archives & Manuscripts
University of Chicago Archives & Manuscripts
Chicago Public Library
Archival Collection contains papers relating to business and labor.

Archival databases

ArchiveGrid

ArchiveGrid can be used to find primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies. It includes company histories.

HathiTrust Digital Library

HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust LibGuide

UIC Microfilms Holdings

Papers of the Federal Reserve System . Call No. MICROFILM HG-2. (Select records and reports.)

Records of the Federal Trade Commission. Call No. MICROFILM Hd-30. (Select records and reports.)

University of Illinois Chicago

University
Library

Search UIC Library Collections

Search UIC Library Website

Business and Economic History: Newspapers and other Primary Sources

Historical Newspapers and Journals

Primary Sources

Chicago Area Special Collections

Archival databases

UIC Microfilms Holdings

Richard J. Daley Library

Library of the Health Sciences, Chicago

Library of the Health Sciences, Peoria

Crawford Library of the Health Sciences, Rockford

UIC Law Library