What types of information will I find in the Chicago Tribune Historical Archive?

The Chicago Tribune Historical Archive is so large that it has information for most History Fair projects. The archive covers the period between 1849 and 1986 and includes the complete contents of each final edition of the paper that the database producer was able to get and digitize.

The Archive contains both primary and secondary sources. If the reporter is writing at the time the event took place, his/her article is probably a primary source. If he/she is writing about an event that took place months or years earlier, the article is probably a secondary source.

How do I find this information?

Identify the people, places, and events associated with your topic, then search for these names.

The Chicago Tribune Historical Archive contains millions of articles, editorial cartoons, pictures, and advertisements. Because the database is so large, a search on a general topic will usually return thousands of matches. For this reason, we recommend that first you research your topic in a reference work like the Encyclopedia of Chicago or Women Building Chicago [check catalog] and make a list of people, organizations, businesses, etc. (think proper nouns) associated with your topic. Searching for names generally returns a manageable number of results. It will also help if you come up with a date range for your topic.

Other hints for searching:

• Limit your search by "document type."
  Reduce the number of matches you get by using the "document type" limit feature to exclude, for example, classified ads. Or, if you want editorial cartoons and your topic is women's suffrage, you can find three matches with a search on suffrage and document type: editorial cartoon.
  
• Connect your search words with "and."
  When searching, be sure to connect different concepts with the word "and" to prevent the database from treating your search terms as a phrase and only returning articles in which the terms appear right next to each other. Thus, when searching for articles about Governor Altgeld's pardoning of the Haymarket martyrs, type in Altgeld and Haymarket rather than just typing in the two words with nothing between them (that is, Altgeld Haymarket). Alternatively, you can put one word or phrase for each of your concepts in the separate boxes on the search screen.
• Use the language used at the time.
  Note that when searching for an event, you'll need to use the words and spellings that people used at the time to describe the event. For example, when searching for information on Lucy Page Gaston and her anti-tobacco crusade, you'll find a few articles by searching for Lucy Page Gaston and cigarette, but many more articles by searching for Lucy Page Gaston and cigaret, cigaret being the more common spelling at the time.
• Use the orange print button.
  When printing, always use the orange print button to ensure that you get a readable printout (instead of very tiny print or even a blank page).
• Ask for help!
  If you have trouble finding useful material in this database, friendly librarians are available to help you at all Chicago Public Library locations. Just ask.

Can you give me an example?

After reading about Lucy Page Gaston and her anti-smoking stand in Women Building Chicago, search: Lucy Page Gaston and tobacco. Limit by date: 01/01/1894 to 12/31/1924. Thirty-nine matches are found, including:

• "Arrests in Cigaret War; Miss Gaston Starts Her Crusade in Earnest." Chicago Daily Tribune, April 16, 1902. http://www.proquest.com/.
• "Arrest for Boy Smokers Contemplated by Aldermen as Cigaret Cure." Chicago Daily Tribune, December 5, 1903. http://www.proquest.com/.