ProQuest et al only go back to around 1988 for some reason. You can do microfilm to retreat further, provided you have access to microfilm in your city. But even if using microfilm, you still need to PRE-SELECT the date, publication, page number or you will drown in a sea of endless fruitless surfing of reels. Do you know of a newspaper archive/database (similar to proquest) that goes back to the 1970s, 1960s, or even 1950s? Remember the old red periodical index books? Do those exist today online somewhere? Anyone know what happened to the Associated Press online archive? It seems to be shut down now. Thanks in advance.
I'm assuming that the "for some reason" is that computers are kinda new. Yes, I realize that even GUI computers did exist in 1988 (the first Mac came out in 1984 (and I remember the wild excitement of going back to my boyfriend's dorm with his new 128K Mac); the Lisa came out in 1983) but computerization of anything was still fundamentally different back then. I Googled, however, and in case you haven't seen the below: National Digital Newspaper Program The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) run by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities is funding statewide newspaper digitization projects and has developed newspaper digitization guidelines http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/ The content created by NDNP partners is house at Chronicling America http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
