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Reply To: | A LISTSERV list for discussions pertaining to New York State history." < [log in to unmask]> |
Date: | Fri, 7 Jun 2002 20:12:58 EDT |
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This list has seen some recent discussion of the high database access fees
faced by independent researchers. Here's a new (and happy) wrinkle: The New
York Geneological and Biographical Society, a membership organization in New
York (http://www.nygbs.org/) now provides its members with full on-line
access to the Pro-Quest, full text database of The New York Times - back to
1851.
At the NYG&B's beginning rate of $60 per year, this is an unusual advance for
those scholars who work "without portfolio".
I have not closely compared the Pro-Quest version of the Times with those
offered by others (like Ancestry.com, and NewspaperArchive.com) except to
determine that it is much more extensive in terms of date. There are,
however, noticeable variations of search results between all these databases
(which are all developed from separate OCR digitizations of the microfilm
version of the Times).
There are also variations from the results of traditional hard copy research
finding aids for the Times: for the early New York African-American architect
Vertner Tandy, the G&B's ProQuest database picked up two articles on his
wife's appearance at a 1923 wedding (of the granddaughter of Madame C. J.
Walker, a hair-straightener millionaire and Tandy client) which do not appear
in Byron & Valerie Falk's hard copy "Personal Name Index" to the Times. The
Falk work has hitherto been the gold standard of Times indexing. But the
ProQuest version somehow misses Tandy's 1949 obituary, which is captured in
the Falk work.
Christopher Gray
"Streetscapes" Columnist, Sunday Real Estate Section
The New York Times
office: 246 West 80th Street
New York City 10024
voice: 212-799-0520
fax: 212-799-0542
e: [log in to unmask]
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