The Ad*Access database contains images and descriptive information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in US and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. The advertisements were selected from Duke University Library’s Competitive Advertisements Collection of the J. Walter Thompson Company, a major international advertising agency founded in 1864. Five subject areas were chosen based upon their popularity to researchers and their influence on American culture: radio, television, transportation, beauty and hygiene, and World War II. The purpose of this site is to provide researchers and students with sufficient material to begin to understand the advertising for a certain product or time period.
The main page is simple and straightforward. A brief description of the project, along with a rotating advertising image, greets visitors. To access the database, users may either browse or search by keyword. Browsing provides access to the main categories, the subcategories, and brief histories of each industry. Searching the database will help users find words appearing in advertising headlines or locate ads by company, product, publication name, or target audience. The illustration/special features option identifies ads containing specific types of illustrations or specialized advertising devices, such as coupons. Search results list the categories by the number of relevant advertisements within each category, and then by each date/subcategory range. Within these ranges, the advertisements appear in alphabetical order by the headline recorded for an advertisement.
Each image is accompanied by information on its headline, date, company, product name, the publication name and type in which it appeared, number of pages, target audience, and copyright notices. A zoom option is available to provide a clearer image. Subject headings link users to advertisements with similar themes.
Other features of the site include a chronology of major events and interesting facts for the 1911‐1955 time frame. The timelines provide general context for the ads in the project. Researchers will find much information on the collection and selection of the images, copyright information, contact information for non‐electronic copies of ads, bibliographical references, and links to sites related to advertising history.
The project is considered complete, so there are no current plans to add additional advertisements to this site. However, another grant‐funded project that covers an earlier time period, “The Emergence of Advertising in America, 1850‐1920,” will complement the Ad*Access project.
This Web site provides unique information for researchers, students, and general users. It is not meant to provide in‐depth research of advertising history, but instead provides a starting point for researchers. Few other advertisement collections are present on the Web; there is a contents list available for the vast D’Arcy Collection at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, but no images are provided.
The Ad*Access site is organized well, navigation is easy, and images load in a timely manner. This is a recommended site for all libraries.
