LibGuides: History: Periodicals/Magazines

About Periodicals/Magazines

Princess Elizabeth on TIME Magazine, April 29, 1929

Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth
on the cover of TIME Magazine,
April 29, 1929

A "periodical" is a publication that appears at regular intervals (or periodically). This could be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or even annually. (Some libraries refer to them as "serials" because they're issued serially, that is, one after the other). A newspaper is an example of a periodical published daily (see "Newspapers" under the Primary Sources tab). Scholarly journals are often published monthly or quarterly (see "Scholarly Journals" under the Secondary Sources tab). A magazine is usually published weekly or monthly.

Magazines published at the time of your research interest can be invaluable primary sources. Magazine articles generally cover a wide variety of topics of interest to people of the time or that deal with current events of the day. This can provide you with insight into how people learned about events as they were happening and how these events were framed and understood by writers, journalists and others.

Magazine/Periodical Databases

American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection This link opens in a new window
"EBSCO partners with American Antiquarian Society (AAS), the premier library documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction, to provide digital access to the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1684 and 1912." -- EBSCO
American Periodicals Series (Collection I) This link opens in a new window
"APS Online spans over 1,500 titles and 7 million pages of content, from the first American magazines, published in 1741, to the World War II period-200 years of American history as recorded in magazines, journals, and newspapers." -- ProQuest
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
"British Periodicals traces the development and growth of the periodical press in Britain from its origins in the seventeenth century through to the Victorian 'age of periodicals' and beyond. On completion this unique digital archive will consist of almost 500 periodical runs published from the 1680s to the 1930s, comprising six million keyword-searchable pages and forming an unrivalled record of more than two centuries of British history and culture." -- ProQuest
Early Oklahoma Serials This link opens in a new window
"In cooperation with Amigos Library Services, the OSU Library has begun to make many historical resources available, especially this collection of magazines published in Oklahoma from around 1890-1910. With this on-going project we hope to make a wide variety of Early Oklahoma Serials available to researchers and interested citizens." -- OSU Library
Gerritsen Collection This link opens in a new window
"In the late 1800's, Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen began collecting books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. The Gerritsen Collection has since become the greatest single source for the study of women's history in the world." -- ProQuest
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
"Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century." -- website
JSTOR 19th Century British Pamphlets This link opens in a new window
"This collection, created by RLUK (Research Libraries UK), contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in UK research libraries. Pamphlets were an important means of public debate, covering the key political, social, technological, and environmental issues of their day. They have been underutilized within research and teaching because they are generally quite difficult to access – often bound together in large numbers or otherwise hard to find in the few research libraries that hold them. The digitization of more than 20,000 pamphlets from seven UK institutions will provide researchers, students, and teachers with an immensely rich and coherent corpus of primary sources with which to study the socio-political and economic landscape of 19th century Britain." -- JSTOR
Pulp Magazines Project This link opens in a new window
"The Pulp Magazines Project is an open-access digital archive dedicated to the study and preservation of one of the twentieth century's most influential literary & artistic forms: the all-fiction pulpwood magazine. The Project also provides information on the history of this important but long neglected medium, along with biographies of pulp authors, artists, and their publishers." -- website
Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
"Readers’ Guide Retrospective™: 1890-1982 provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines, including full coverage of the original print volumes of Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature™. This important resource offers a wide range of researchers access to information about history, culture and seminal developments across nearly a century." -- EBSCO