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
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