Readex Announces Completion of Digital American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I

Available Now, Newest Archive of Americana Collection Vividly Captures Daily Lives of 19th-Century Americans

NAPLES, Fla./Friday, May 19, 2006 — Readex, a leading publisher of online historical collections, announced today that it has completed the digital edition of American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, 1760-1900. It offers full-color, fully searchable facsimile images of approximately 15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900. Based on the landmark collections of broadsides and ephemera held by the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), this digital edition, published in cooperation with the AAS, is part of Readex’s acclaimed Web-based Archive of Americana.

Available now, American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, 1760-1900 enables students and scholars to explore hundreds of specific subjects in American history by easily searching and browsing high-resolution facsimiles of approximately 30,000 rare and often graphically stunning primary materials. Created in response to popular topics and issued locally, most broadsides and ephemera were not preserved. However, those that survive today offer an invaluable perspective on many aspects of American culture between 1760 and 1900. Major subjects covered include customs and manners, economics and trade, government, health, law and crime, military, peoples, philosophy, politics, religion, science and society.

“As AAS librarian Samuel Foster Haven noted more than 100 years ago,” said Georgia B. Barnhill, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts at the American Antiquarian Society, “Broadsides and ephemera ‘imply a vast deal more than they literally express, and disclose visions of interior conditions of society such as cannot be found in formal narratives.’”

“Last fall, the launch of American Broadsides and Ephemera helped mark the anniversary of Readex’s storied 50-year partnership with the AAS,” said Remmel Nunn, Readex Vice President of New Product Development. “The completion of this unique digital edition is proof positive of Readex’s equally enduring commitment to providing authoritative primary source collections based on the best bibliographic controls and the nation’s finest print holdings of American historical documents.”

Readex’s digital edition of American Broadsides and Ephemera can be cross-searched with all other collections in the Web-based Archive of Americana, which features more than 1,000 newspapers, 100,000 books and seminal collections of government documents printed between 1639 and the late 20th century.

For more information on the digital edition of American Broadsides and Ephemera, the Archive of Americana or other Readex products, visit www.readex.com.

About the American Antiquarian Society
Founded in 1812 as the country’s first national historical organization, the American Antiquarian Society is both a learned society and a major independent research library. The AAS library today houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, sheet music, and graphic arts material printed through 1876 in what is now the United States, as well as 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 Society sponsors a broad range of programs—visiting research fellowships, research, education, publications, lectures, and concerts—for constituencies ranging from school children and their teachers through undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, creative and performing artists and writers, and the general public.

About Readex
For more than 50 years, the Readex name has been synonymous with research in historical printed materials and government documents. Recognized by librarians, students and scholars for its efforts to transform academic research, Readex offers a wealth of Web-based, primary source materials in the humanities and social sciences. Today, Readex, a division of NewsBank, inc., has established a leadership position among publishers by creating the digital Archive of Americana, a family of online collections that provides unprecedented access to the history, culture and daily life of the United States over more than three centuries.

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For more information or to speak with a Readex expert, contact Readex Marketing Manager David Loiterstein by calling 203.421.0152 or emailing dloiterstein@readex.com.