SERIALS AS PRIMARY SOURCES

By their nature, serials -- magazines and newspapers -- often offer the most immediate published accounts of and reactions to historical events. In Europe, the development of the periodical press is a product of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The periodical press in America, and in many other locales colonized by European powers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is almost as old as the earliest colonies themselves.

The challenge of using serials as primary sources is twofold: first, identifying what publications existed in the locale and at the time you're interested in, and secondly, finding out if someone has vastly simplified your search for information by providing an index to the contents of the publication.

IDENTIFYING SERIALS

For many time periods and many countries, bibliographies or directories of periodicals and newspapers exist. For more recent historical periods, these may have been published contemporaneously with the publications themselves in order to identify the extent of this publishing as it occurred.

EXAMPLES:

• Willing's press guide. London, Willing's Press Service. 1874- . For earlier time periods, or for particular locales, or for identifying periodicals dealing with specific subjects, bibliographies of publications may exist.
• The Waterloo directory of Victorian periodicals, 1824-1900. [Waterloo,Ont.] : Published for the University of Waterloo by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, [1976- ]
• Danky, James Philip. Native American periodicals and newspapers, 1828-1982 : bibliography, publishing record, and holdings / edited by James P. Danky ; compiled by Maureen E. Hady ; Ann Bowles, research assistant ; foreword by Vine Deloria, Jr. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1984.
• Granderoute, Robert. Catalogue des periodiques anciens (1600-1789) conserves a la Bibliotheque municipale de Bordeaux / par Robert Granderoute. Bordeaux : Societe des bibliophiles de Guyenne, 1987.
• American newspapers, 1821-1936; a union list of files available in the United States and Canada, edited by Winifred Gregory under the auspices of the Bibliographical Society of America. New York, H.W. Wilson Co., 1937.
• Campbell, Georgetta Merritt. Extant collections of early Black newspapers : a research guide to the Black press, 1880-1915, with an index to the Boston Guardian, 1902-1904 / by Georgetta Merritt Campbell. Troy, N.Y. : Whitston Publishing Co., 1981.

To locate bibliographies or directories of periodicals or newspapers, use the following subject headings in Orbis and the card catalog:

• [Country adjective, e.g. American] periodicals--Bibliography
• [Country adjective, e.g. South African] newspapers--Bibliography
• [Subject area, e.g. Science]--Periodicals--Bibliography
• [Name of ethnic group, e.g. Chinese] American newspapers--Bibliography

IDENTIFYING INDEXES TO PERIODICALS AND NEWSPAPERS

What everyone hopes to find, of course, is a well-prepared and complete index to the entire contents of whatever newspaper or periodical is found to be the most accurate reflection of the time period under study. But this is often not -- and in the case of newspapers, rarely -- the case. Much historical investigation is based on hours of pouring over issue after issue of a periodical or scanning reel after reel of microfilm, searching for the elusive mention of an event or a person. But indexes do exist, and it's always best to seek their existence first.

IDENTIFYING NEWSPAPER INDEXES

Because of the extensive coverage of newspapers, the moderate length of their articles, the number of articles contained in a single issue, and the frequency of their publication, it's unusual for a newspaper to have a printed index. Those that do, however, provide valuable access to the history of decades, not only in their own publications, but in identifying the date that an event was covered, may often help the researcher to identify articles in other newspapers as well. Perhaps the best known newspaper indexes -- for the length of their historical coverage as well as for the reputation of the publication indexed -- are the New York Times index (1851-) and Palmer's Index to the Times of London (and its successor)(1790-).

In Orbis and the card catalog, check for the existence of an index to a specific newspaper using the subject search [Name of the newspaper, e.g. Wall Street Journal]--Indexes.

American newspapers also have a history of having indexes produced by historical societies or by public libraries in the city or town where they're published. These indexes may still exist only in card form and only for a specific period of time. A good guide to the existence of these unpublished indexes (for the United States) is Milner, Anita Cheek. Newspaper indexes : a location and subject guide for researchers / by Anita Cheek Milner (Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press, 1977-1982. 3 v.)

While indexes to multiple newspapers do exist, they're not nearly as common as indexes to the contents of multiple periodicals.

EXAMPLES:

• San Francisco newspapers index, 1904-1959< [microform] / California State Library. [Sacramento, Calif.] : The Library ; [Bellevue, WA: produced by Commercial Microfilm Service, 1986] (699 microfiches)
• Jodziewicz, Thomas W. Birth of America : the year in review, 1763-1783 ; a chronological guide and index to the contemporary colonial press / by Thomas W. Jodziewicz. Glen Rock, N.J. : Microfilming Corp. of America, c1976.
• Zeitungs-Index. Pullach bei Munchen, Verlag Dokumentation. 1.- Jahrg.; Jan./Mdarz 1974-

IDENTIFYING PERIODICAL INDEXES

Unlike newspapers, which generally have indexes to their own individual contents if they're indexed at all, it's more usual for periodicals to be indexed by separate periodical indexes which provide author and subject access to the contents of many -- sometimes hundreds -- of periodical titles. A commonly known and used index for this purpose is the Readers' guide to periodical literature which currently indexes almost two hundred general interest English- language (primarily American) periodicals. But the Readers' guide is also an example of an index of potentially great historical value, since it began in 1899 and thus provides indexing for many of the most widely-read American periodicals over the course of the twentieth century. Other examples include:

• Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriftenliteratur aus allen Gebieten des Wissens. International bibliography of periodical literature covering all fields of knowledge. Bibliographie internationale de la litterature periodique dans tous les domaines de la connaissance. Osnabruck, F. Dietrich. Jahrg. 1- 1963/64- .  With its predecessors, this index provides indexing of American, English, and Continental periodicals back to 1911.
• Poole's index to periodical literature / by William Frederick Poole, with the assistance as associate editor of William I. Fletcher, and the cooperation of the American Library Association and the Library Association of the United Kingdom. Rev. ed. Gloucester, Mass. : P. Smith, 1963. 6 v. in 7.  Provides indexing for 479 English and American periodicals from 1802-1906.
• Periodical contents index [computer file]. Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healey, 1994. Provides tables-of-contents searching for over 200 humanities and social sciences journals published in North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, and Germany between 1818 and 1990/91, with coverage strongest in the mid-twentieth century.  Periodicals Index Online.
• Houghton, Walter Edwards. Wellesley index to Victorian periodicals, 1824-1900 . Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1966-1989. 5 vol.  Provides table of contents and chronological listings of the articles in 43 major British journals, providing the identity of authors of many articles which were published anonymously or under pseudonyms; v.5 consists of dated bibliographies of all identified authors and their contributions to the major quarterlies and monthlies.

Some periodicals also provide their own indexes or have had indexes produced for them. These can be identified in Orbis and the card catalog by using the subject heading [Name of periodical]--Indexes.

For more specific examples of periodical and newspaper indexes for particular countries and time periods, see Bibliographic tools for research in history.

Acknowledgement
This material is based on the Web site created to support a series of colloquia in historical research offered by the Yale University Library. The initial site was prepared in August 1996 by Suzanne Lorimer, Susanne Roberts, Margaret Powell, George Miles, Fred Musto, Emily Horning, Cesar Rodriguez, Nancy Godleski, Richard Williams, Elizabeth Pauk, and Martha Brogan.

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