Today, Readex distributed this news release:

Readex Announces Five Unique New Historical Newspaper Collections to Meet Targeted Teaching and Research Needs

One-of-a-kind resources focus on American agriculture, business, political campaigns, religion, and official pronouncements and documents

September 17, 2015 (NAPLES, FL) — In partnership with the American Antiquarian Society and other partners, Readex will launch five new collections in November 2015. Each has been carefully designed to meet targeted teaching and research needs in diverse yet vital areas of American history.

American Business: Agricultural Newspapers offers an exclusive focus on agriculture, agricultural technology and the economics of farming. Agriculture was the dominant American business in the 18th and 19th centuries, fueling the social and economic engine that built the U.S. This unique collection provides 200 newspapers essential for understanding America’s agrarian heritage, national character and cultural values.

American Business: Mercantile Newspapers provides statistics-laden content through nearly 500 papers spawned by the rapid growth of shipping and international trade. Targeting wealthy merchants, professionals, and the educated elite, mercantile papers often were voluminous with a very large format, making production and subscription expensive. This matchless collection contains a goldmine of not only essential business data but also independent general news coverage and objective reporting.

American Gazettes: Newspapers of Record delivers more than 100 titles that complied with prevalent town and city government requirements in the 18th and 19th centuries to publish official pronouncements and other important documents. Rich with facts and figures as well as vital coverage of meetings, notices, laws and news, this indispensable collection provides a trove of illuminating information.

American Politics: Campaign Newspapers is the only collection of 19th-century American papers devoted to political campaigns and issues. Through more than 300 titles, this resource features rich coverage of all presidential and important regional campaigns from the Early National Era to Reconstruction. These campaign newspapers document the issues, arguments and opposing viewpoints that shaped U.S. political history.

American Religion: Denominational Newspapers holds immense value for students and scholars of not only religious and theological history, but also American history as a whole. Religion was the epicenter of nearly everything in the 19th century, and this collection reflects that influence, providing 320+ papers from more than a dozen major and denominations. Far exceeding inspirational homilies, the editors of these newspapers took stands on the biggest issues of the time: slavery, women’s suffrage and many others.

“As the leading publisher of historical American newspapers, Readex is uniquely positioned to offer these new collections covering five crucial areas of research and study,” says Jim Draper, Executive Vice President, Readex. “The collections are definitive in their treatment of the subject matter, and they offer students and scholars valuable new paths for discovery and assessment.”

Available individually or in the single cross-searchable America’s Historical Newspapers platform, these five new collections will offer significant teaching and research opportunities across the humanities and social sciences, including such fields as American business and economic history, religious and theological history, political and government history, and many others.

About the American Antiquarian Society
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) is both a learned society and a major independent research library. The AAS library houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, sheet music, and graphic arts material printed from first contact through 1876 in what is now the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. The AAS collections also contain manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary works, bibliographies, and other reference works related to all aspects of American history and culture before the twentieth century. The library contains more than two-thirds of all known imprints created in America before 1821, making it the single greatest repository of such materials in the world. Additionally, the Society’s holdings of American printed materials dating from 1821 through 1876 are among the strongest anywhere.

About Readex, a division of NewsBank
For more than 60 years, the Readex name has been synonymous with research in historical materials and government documents. Recognized by librarians, students, and scholars for its efforts to transform academic scholarship, Readex offers a wealth of Web-based collections in the humanities and social sciences, including the Archive of Americana, a family of historical collections featuring searchable books, pamphlets, newspapers, and government documents printed in America over three centuries, and the World Newspaper Archive, created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries. Also available are the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports and the Joint Publications Research Service Reports, two of the U.S. government’s fundamental sources of foreign intelligence gathered from publicly available media during the second half of the 20th century.