MORE ON CITY DIRECTORIES -- PART III. Público Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 5, Number 38, September 22, 2002, Article 13
MORE ON CITY DIRECTORIES -- PART III.
Dick Johnson writes: "For two weeks I have written about
the numismatic use of City Directories for researchers in our
field. These are widely used by collectors, writers, curators
-- and catalogers! -- of American tokens and medals.Despite the vast research already done in this field by
Russ Rulau, George Fuld, Dave Schenkman, Arlie
Slabaugh, and many, many others, a great deal remains to
be done. As a collector I could find no greater pleasure
than to track down an American token or medal of the
19th or 20th century in my collection and learn more
about its background. City directories are often the first
step in this delightful chore. Maverick tokens (those with
no obvious location) can also be identified with city
directory research.This week I would like to talk about those microforms of
city directories (microfiche and microfilm). It appears a
group of Connecticut businessmen began filming, one page
at a time, all the city directories in the collection of the
American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Missing directories were located in other libraries.This chore was so daunting they divided the project into
four phases: all the American city directories from 1786 to
1861 were in the first phase. This was completed in 1967
and they begin marketing these, in total, by city, state, or
individual microfiche (this phase was issued only in
microfiche).For the second phase they chose only the directories from
the fifty largest cities in America. Even so, they had to cut
off Phase Two at 1881. These were issued in microfilm (one
or two directories per roll). Phase Three covered 1881 to
1901 and, they say, these works were printed on such poor
paper, the original books were literally falling apart.Phase Four covered the 20th century, 1902 to 1935. Since
then hundreds of other cities have been microfilmed. (And a
later, Fifth phase, covers 1936-1960.)Their company was located, I discovered, in Woodbridge,
Connecticut. Great, I thought! Since this was nearby to my
Litchfield location, I could travel to their offices and research
everything, from everywhere right in their offices. I called to
learn, sorry Charlie, that would be in competition to their
customers, the libraries around the world who buy their
microforms. You have to do your research in those libraries,
that's their "business!"The firm, originally called Research Publications, was sold to
Gale Research of Detroit -- they merged another company,
Information Access Company with this firm, now called
Primary Source Media and called this "The Gale Group" --
and that firm, in turn, was acquired by Primary Source Media
of Berkshire, England. If you didn't follow all those global
business mergers, don't fret.Current prices for the microfiche is $4.28 each (making all
Phase One microfiche cost over $26,000). Microfilm rolls
are $80.25 each (the list of cities runs 20 pages with about
40 per page and often dozens of rolls per city; I can't even
calculate THAT total cost!). These can still be obtained in
Woodbridge and you can go to their website:
http://www.citydirectories.psmedia.com/.But to do your token or medal research, start with your local
library. Give them the "business" first. Then you may have to
travel to the largest city or state library nearest where your
item was issued. Good luck, and let me hear of your success
(or problems): dick.johnson at snet.net- 2002-09-22
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