TechEssence.info

As a manager of information technology services, sometimes it's easy to lose sight of what these tools can really do. One of my non-work diversions is historical research on some obscure individuals in American history. Recently I revisited a few of these projects after having put them aside for several years, and used some tools that have been developed since that time: like Google Book Search, Proquest Historical Newspapers, and Newspaperarchive.com.

...and have been awed by what I've been able to find in just a matter of days; things that I never would have found before, or which would have taken years to find involving a great deal of travel and expense. Access to indexed historical newspapers from different cities, large and small, is going to revolutionize American studies.

For example, Google Book Search allowed me to discover that the subject of one of my projects had a brother named George Herman Lawson. But access to indexed historical newspaper archives from different times and places has allowed me to trace the divergent exploits of George--expolits that none of his contemporaies were likely fully aware of--so that I can say without doubt that he was one of the most outrageous characters of the early 20th century.