HistoryBuff.com is a nonprofit organization that provides online primary source material concerned primarily with major and not so major events and how they were reported in the newspapers. It also contains information about the presses and technology used to produce newspapers over the past 400 years, state trivia, panoramas of U.S. historical sites, transcripts of news articles about major events, and interactive quizzes. The site also provides info for those interested in collecting and selling historic newspapers.
Collection Principles
There is a plethora of information on this site. However, for the purposes of this blog, I am mostly concerned with its online newspaper archives.
The newspaper archives is arranged chronologically, dated from 1700 – 2004. While the chronological arrangement is quite helpful, the grouping of the newspapers is rather strange. For example, one folder contains items dated from 1700 – 1739, the next from 1740 – 1769, and a third from 1770 – 1799. The grouping appears to be arbitrary, based on no perceived logic. Why not group all the newspapers for that century in one folder dated 1700 – 1799?
Object Characteristics
The site has done a good job of digitizing the newspapers and making them available online. While I could not discern the format of the objects, the newspapers can be enlarged to a very high degree of clarity. One complaint is that only the first page of each newspaper has been digitized. The information offered would be much more valuable if the complete newspapers were online. In addition, an index of some kind would allow users to see the headlines without having to click into each folder containing the newspaper groupings.
Metadata
The metadata is very good. It lists the date, name of the newspaper, and headline for that date. However, you do not have the capabilities to search the newspapers.
Intended Audience
The site states this collection was placed online for “students, teachers, and history buffs.” I agree with this and also believe that this site would be useful – although in a very limited capacity – to researchers needing to see historic front pages of major events. Some of the more interesting newspapers provided digitally on this site are:
• The New York Herald, 4-13-1861, “Civil War Begun!”
• The Daily Cleveland Herald, 4-28-1865, “John Wilkes Booth Captured and Killed”
• Chicago Daily News, 9-10-1900, “Galveston Texas Hurricane”
• Milwaukee Daily News, 4-15-1912, “Titanic Sinks”
Some of the other sections of this site contain useful and/or interesting information as well and are worth a view, such as the panoramic views of historic sites, the state facts, and the quizzes, although you have to log-in to interact with the latter.
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