Civil War News Goes Online
A new American Civil War Newspapers website has been launched by Virginia Tech in time for observance of the Civil War Sesquicentennial.
William C. Davis, professor of history and director of programs at the university’s Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, says graduate students have thoroughly indexed the site’s first journal, the Macon, Ga., Daily Telegraph for the period July 1860 to June 1865.
“There are already some excellent website newspaper resources for Civil War newspapers,” said Davis, in a Virginia Tech press release, “but most have limitations.”
Rather than rely on a headlines-only index or a keyword search program, Davis says Tech’s approach can produce cross-references and locate concepts or ideas. “Our graduate students have greatly enhanced the digital search for Civil War newspaper clips,” he said, “as their own eyes have captured every name and keyword.”
The Tech press release said the project plans to index 10 or more papers –”Northern and Southern, Eastern and Western, urban and rural, white and black — for a balanced cross-section of opinion, observation, and experience.” As each journal is completed, its index will be consolidated with the master index, accessible in a single search.
Access to American Civil War newspapers was been funded in part by a grant from the Watson-Brown Foundation with the cooperation of ProQuest of Ann Arbor, Mich.
Times says academic digital deals coming
According to the latest “special offer” notice to New York Times online users, an additional discount for some academic subscribers is coming:
Soon we will announce a discounted digital subscription option for current faculty, students, administrators and staff at eligible colleges and universities.
Eligible colleges will be those that purchase a qualifying number of copies of The New York Times as part of their newspaper readership program.
Here’s the education program site, details to come, and a “Digital Q&A for College Educators” page that says a site license plan is also in the works.
For now, if your college does not have a “newspaper readership program” the Times is offering a 25 percent discount to registered users for the first year of a digital subscription under its new paywall plan. That’s $3.75 a week for nytimes.com plus the iPad app, for example; $5 a week after the discounted year.
