Scholars of history and literature as well as media buffs will appreciate the enhanced American Periodical Series, rich with new content and more accessible than ever through a new custom interface that makes searching and browsing the resources as easy as flipping pages.

Among the titles introduced since August 2002:

McClure's (1893-1929)

The Dial (1840-1844; 1860; and 1880-1929)

Scribner’s Monthly (1870-1881)

Century Illustrated Magazine (1881-1906)

Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine (1868-1935)

Saturday Evening Post (1821-1885)

American Academy of Arts and Science, Proceedings (1846-1906)

In all, more than 50 titles spanning more than one million pages have been added to the database since August 2002. The process will continue until all 1,100 titles are complete in 2004. More than 500,000 pages will be added this quarter. ProQuest used a new digitization process to improve image quality. Users praise its ease of use and speedy loading.

Users may search the new content by additional article types, and choose full page images or individual articles. Page maps allow users to browse entire issues. Abstracts are available for each article and additional user guides provide even more ease of access and content highlights. The new interface allows greatly improved access to all 775 plus titles currently available.

Today's readers will recognize the direct descendants of these remarkable publications on their local newsstands. Titles such as Scientific American, Ladies' Home Journal, and the Saturday Evening Post carry on the tradition that began with Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine of the 1740s. All are available now in APS along with full runs of many more professional and scholarly journals, newspapers and popular magazines spanning to World War II. Coming in 2003: Godey's, Vanity Fair, Puck, and many more venerable titles.

APS is a vast multi-disciplinary collection of history as it was happening and a 200-year record of daily life and concerns. Through actual page images, readers see the rise of popular periodicals, the advertising industry, and Americana – recipes, fashion, inventions, weird science, manners and lifestyles, politically incorrect views, and humor.

The content encourages users to travel through time and thought from religious journals and children’s magazines to social commentary from Jane Addams and Henry David Thoreau. APS is equally valuable for its offerings of rare and scholarly material.

Users can:

• Read treasures of American literature as they first appeared, including stories and poems by Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Willa Cather, and Bret Harte
• Track major events of the 18th and 19th centuries through contemporary news reports and editorials, including the rise of investigative journalism and the evolution of the essay as a journalistic form.
• Find firsthand accounts of the search for the North Pole by Robert Peary as the 19th century turned into the 20th
• Trace the development of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture and reputation.

The complete APS digital archive is accessible 24 hours a day, every day, making 200 years of content instantly available in the original page layouts.  From the first mass printing of the Declaration of Independence to the first horseless carriage ads, users can view a parade of American life that is unmatched online. Simple keyword searches or more sophisticated Boolean and fielded searches by article type, author, title or periodical pinpoint information.

The APS database is available immediately from ProQuest. It is especially well suited to academic and public libraries. Free trials are available. Librarians who wish more information may contact their account representative at 1-800-521-0600 (outside the US, call 011-44-1-223-215-512) or email library_sales@il.proquest.com. Editors may call 1-800-521-0600. ext. 6489 or email pr@il.proquest.com.

Director Martin Scorsese may have found inspiration in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post, one of the many popular magazines found in APS. Like his recently released film about the rough and tumble inhabitants of New York City's Five Points neighborhood during the Civil War, APS offers insights into other times that are genuinely thrilling. Click on the link below to see a contemporary view of mid-19th century gangs in this article from APS: www.il.proquest.com/products/pdf/apsarticle.pdf

Citation: The Saturday Evening Post (1839-1885), Philadelphia; August 15, 1857, Iss. 0, THE CITY DANGER.; pg. 2, 1 pgs.

ProQuest Company (NYSE: PQE) is based in Ann Arbor, Mich., and is a leading provider of value-added information and content to the library, education, automotive, and powersports industries. We provide products and services to our customers through two business segments: Information & Learning and Business Solutions. Through our Information & Learning segment, which primarily serves the library and education markets, we aggregate and publish value-added content from a wide range of sources including newspapers, periodicals and books. The ProQuest Business Solutions unit is primarily engaged in the delivery in electronic form of comprehensive parts information to the automotive market. It also provides dealers in the powersports (motorcycle, marine and RV) markets with management systems that enable them to manage their inventory, customer service and other aspects of their businesses.

ProQuest Information and Learning is a world leader in collecting, organizing, and distributing information worldwide to researchers, faculty, and students in libraries and schools. Known widely for its strength in business and economics, general-reference, humanities, social sciences, and STM content, the company develops premium databases comprising periodicals, newspapers, dissertations, out-of-print books, and other scholarly information from more than 8,500 publishers worldwide. Users access the information through the ProQuest® Web-based online information system, Chadwyck-Healey^TM electronic and microform resources, UMI® microform and print reference products, bigchalk^TM educational resources, and XanEdu^TM online faculty and student resources. For more information about ProQuest Information and Learning, visit www.il.proquest.com.