Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920, http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/. Created and maintained by the Digital Scriptorium and the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library, Duke University. Reviewed Dec. 4-15, 2006

Abstract

In recent decades advertisements have become key primary sources, both for studying business history and for shedding light on social and cultural patterns. Duke University's John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History has made over nine thousand advertising images available on its skillfully designed Web site, Emergence of Advertising in America. The online material represents a small fraction of the holdings of the Hartman Center; the site directs researchers to the center's other online and hard copy resources and to advertising history archives elsewhere. Emergence of Advertising in America provides access to eleven collections of advertising material. The largest contains over thirty-five hundred images of advertising ephemera, such as trade cards, calendars, and postcards. The collections can be browsed. One might start with carriages and buggies, move on to bicycles, and then examine automobile items. The contents of other categories range from fifty books on advertising...