"We are pleased to add another valuable offering, ProQuest Obituaries, to our Genealogy Center resources," said Rod Gauvin, senior vice president, ProQuest Information and Learning. "ProQuest has tapped into its rich historical archives to deliver a tool that serves as a critically important source for reconstructing family history. For the first time, libraries will have access to obituaries from these top national titles in a digital collection ideal for researchers of all levels."
ProQuest Obituaries will provide obituaries and death notices in image format from the complete runs of major national newspapers dating back to 1851, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Constitution, The Boston Globe, and The Chicago Defender. No other product offers access to obituaries and death notices from the complete historical runs of these major national newspapers.
The database meets a variety of research needs. At public libraries, novice and professional historians and genealogists rely on obituaries as an essential source of information used in conjunction with other resources, such as the census. Obituaries often provide such detail as proper full name; maiden name; spouse information; names of parents, siblings, and children; occupation; religious beliefs; ethnic background; military service, and activities in community organizations, as well as cause of death, place of death and birth, and more.
ProQuest Obituaries allows users to significantly reduce the time required to solve challenging genealogical mysteries or research questions by offering an easy to use interface that is simple enough for beginners, yet sophisticated enough for advanced researchers. ProQuest Obituaries cross-searches more than 600 years of content from diverse sources, bringing public libraries the breadth of content their patrons are looking for.
ProQuest Obituaries will launch in the summer of 2006. The first release of ProQuest Obituaries will focus on deep historical records, and will then grow to include over 150 current newspapers.
Other ProQuest Genealogy Center resources include HeritageQuest™ Online, Ancestry® Library Edition, ProQuest Historical Newspapers™, Digital Sanborn® Maps, UMI® archival newspapers and magazines, African-American Biographical Database™, ProQuest Military Journals™, American Periodicals Series™, Archives U.S.A., Canada’s Heritage from 1844™, CultureGrams™, and UMI® HeritageQuest™ in microform.
