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ProQuest Digitizes the Magazines that Chronicle Women’s Roles and Family Life in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Women’s Magazine Archive addresses demand from researchers

ProQuest is providing researchers with a unique lens on 19th and 20th-century history and culture by digitizing the complete archives of six of the foremost women’s magazines of the past century, making them easy to search and access. Women’s Magazine Archive encompasses such titles as Good Housekeeping, Better Homes & Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal, essential primary sources in the fields of gender studies, social history, marketing, fashion, media, and more. Available on the ProQuest platform, the content can be searched along with a diverse selection of research materials and scholarly content – newspapers, dissertations, periodicals, reports – providing researchers, students and faculty with a broader view of their topic. 

This digital collection addresses a critical gap in research materials. “Women’s consumer magazines of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries serve as rich records of evolving assumptions about gender roles and changing cultural mores,” said Susan Bokern, Vice President, Product Management, ProQuest Information Solutions. “Until now, their availability has been limited; print back files of consumer titles are seldom maintained by libraries and no existing online services offer deep archives of consumer titles in this area.  These materials have been requested by researchers for a reason: the range of information these magazines cover is extraordinary -- family life, home economics, health, careers, fashion, culture – delivered through both editorial content and advertising.”

The archive includes:

• Better Homes & Gardens (1922 to 2005)
• Chatelaine (1928 to 2005)
• Good Housekeeping (1885 to 2005)
• Ladies’ Home Journal (1883 to 2005)
• Parents (1926 to 2005)
• Redbook (1903 to 2005)

All are scanned from cover-to cover in high-resolution color for precise reproductions that capture every detail on every page. Detailed article-level indexing enables efficient searching and navigation of this content. The combination of a monthly publication schedule and deep back files produces a wealth of material chronicling changing social, historical and cultural trends.

When complete, this first collection of Women’s Magazine Archive will encompass approximately 850,000 pages of content.  With more than 210,000 pages of content already included at release, Women’s Magazine Archive is expected to be fully loaded by mid-year 2016.  A second collection of Women’s Magazines Archive will launch in the second half of 2016 and will once again contain a collection of six US titles, including Cosmopolitan, Women’s Day and more.

http://www.proquest.com