Saturday, December 8, 2012

The American Stationer: a directory of online copies

For those researching the history of writing instruments, copies of The American Stationer (later, The American Stationer & Office Manager) are an invaluable resource. Many of the issues have been digitized and are available through Google Books, the Internet Archive, and HathiTrust, but there are some catches. One is that many volumes have yet to be scanned, while others are available only via Google's "snippet view". The other is that the majority of the volumes available through Google Books are accessible only from within the USA. Persistent researchers in other countries can have recourse, however, to a proxy server service, that makes it look as if one is browsing from a location within the USA. Tunnelbear is one such service that seems to get good reviews, and is free for up to 500MB of data per month.

George Kovalenko was the first to compile a public list of volumes available. It is posted at the Lion & Pen website, along with much of George's original research into these and other old periodicals [Not any more, thanks to the unfortunate demise of Lion & Pen - D.]. The list below started with my own directory of links, since finding the individual volumes within Google is (even for US residents) a bit of a nightmare. Most cannot be found by following links from other volumes; instead, one has to search for them individually, occasionally lucking out and finding a handful of links to other missing copies. The volumes available through the Internet Archive are much better catalogued, and I believe are also available worldwide without recourse to proxy servers.

Note that there was an error in volume numbering in 1919 (there is a second volume 84), and that in many cases more than one copy is available. The Internet Archive scans tend to be much higher resolution than the Google scans, and are also normally available for download in a much broader selection of formats. In general, the Google volumes can only be searched online. The pdf versions are great to have as references, but they are images only and cannot be searched -- a major drawback, imperfect as the OCR sometimes is on the scans. In a number of cases there are duplicate scans, usually of volumes both at the New York Public Library (NYPL) and the University of Illinois at Urbana (UI).

This is a work in progress. If you have any additions or corrections to contribute, they would be most welcome. The list follows below.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: As noted in the comments below, it appears that some of the HathiTrust copies are defective, with pages missing or mixed up that are present and in correct order in other online versions.

ALSO, it is important to note that the quality of the OCR varies tremendously in these volumes. Just because one has run a search on a volume for instances of "Waterman" does not mean that all instances will be returned. Manual page-by-page searching will often yield items missed by the search function, as illustrated by this post.


1873 (vol. 1)
1874 (vol. 2) Internet Archive, Hathitrust
1875 (vol. 3) Internet Archive, Hathitrust
1876 (vol. 4)
1877 (vol. 5)
1878 (vol. 6) Internet Archive
1879 (vol. 7) Internet Archive, Google, HathiTrust
1880 (vol. 8) Internet Archive
Jan-Jun 1881 (vol. 9) Internet Archive
Jul-Dec 1881 (vol. 10) Internet Archive
Jan-Jun 1882 (vol. 11) Internet Archive
Jul-Dec 1882 (vol. 12) Internet Archive, Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1883 (vol. 13) Internet Archive, Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1883 (vol. 14) Internet Archive, Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1884 (vol. 15) Internet Archive, Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1884 (vol. 16) Internet Archive
Jan-Jun 1885 (vol. 17) Internet Archive (on Google too?)
Jul-Dec 1885 (vol. 18) Internet Archive, Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1886 (vol. 19) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1886 (vol. 20)
Jan-Jun 1887 (vol. 21) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1887 (vol. 22) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1888 (vol. 23) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1888 (vol. 24) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1889 (vol. 25) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1889 (vol. 26) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1890 (vol. 27) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1890 (vol. 28) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1891 (vol. 29) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1891 (vol. 30) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1892 (vol. 31) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1892 (vol. 32) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1893 (vol. 33) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1893 (vol. 34) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1894 (vol. 35) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1894 (vol. 36) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1895 (vol. 37) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1895 (vol. 38) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1896 (vol. 39) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1896 (vol. 40) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1897 (vol. 41) Google, HathiTrust special Mar 25 holiday supplement in back may be incomplete
Jul-Dec 1897 (vol. 42) Google, HathiTrust

Jan-Jun 1900 (vol. 47) Google, Hathitrust
Jul-Dec 1900 (vol. 48) Google, Hathitrust
Jan-Jun 1901 (vol. 49) Google, Hathitrust
Jul-Dec 1901 (vol. 50) Google, Hathitrust
Jan-Jun 1902 (vol. 51) Google, Hathitrust
Jul-Dec 1902 (vol. 52) Google, Hathitrust
Jan-Jun 1903 (vol. 53) Google, Hathitrust
Jul-Dec 1903 (vol. 54) Google, Hathitrust
Jan-Jun 1904 (vol. 55) Google, Hathitrust
Jul-Dec 1904 (vol. 56) Google, Hathitrust


Jan-Jun 1906 (vol. 59) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1906 (vol. 60) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1907 (vol. 61) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1907 (vol. 62) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1908 (vol. 63) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1908 (vol. 64) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1909 (vol. 65) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1909 (vol. 66) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1910 (vol. 67) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1910 (vol. 68) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1911 (vol. 69) Google, HathiTrust (Jan-Jun 3, missing later Jun issues)
Jul-Dec 1911 (vol. 70) Internet Archive
Jan-Jun 1912 (vol. 71) GoogleHathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1912 (vol. 72) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1913 (vol. 73) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1913 (vol. 74) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1914 (vol. 75) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1914 (vol. 76) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1915 (vol. 77) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1915 (vol. 78) Google, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1916 (vol. 79) Google, HathiTrust
Jul-Dec 1916 (vol. 80) Google NYPL, HathiTrust
Jan-Jun 1917 (vol. 81) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI, HathiTrust UI (only Mar 31-Jun 30)
Jul-Dec 1917 (vol. 82) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI; HathiTrust UI
Jan-Jun 1918 (vol. 83) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI; HathiTrust UI
Jul-Dec 1918 (vol. 84) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI, HathiTrush UI
Jan-Jun 1919 (vol. 84 [sic]) Google NYPL, HathiTrust
Jul-Aug 1919 (vol. 85) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI, HathiTrust UI
Jan-Jun 1920 (vol. 86) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI, HathiTrust UI
Jul-Dec 1920 (vol. 87) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI
Jan-Jun 1921 (vol. 88) HathiTrust NYPL; Google UI, HathiTrust UI
Jul-Dec 1921 (vol. 89) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI; HathiTrust UI
Jan-Jul 1922 (vol. 90) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI; HathiTrust UI (note at front that ad pages removed)
Jul-Dec 1922 (vol. 91) Google NYPL, HathiTrust; Google UI; HathiTrust UI
Jan-Jul 1923 (vol. 92) Google, Hathitrust
Jul-Dec 1923 (vol. 93) Google, Hathitrust
Jan-Jul 1924 (vol. 94) Google, Hathitrust
Jul-Dec 1924 (vol. 95) Google, Hathitrust
Jan-Jul 1925 (vol. 96) Google UI
Jul-Dec 1925 (vol. 97) Google, Hathitrust
Jan-Jul 1926 (vol. 98) Google, Hathitrust
Jul-Dec 1926 (vol. 99) Google, Hathitrust
Jan-Jul 1927 (vol. 100) Google snippet
Jul-Dec 1927 (vol. 101)
Jan-Jul 1928 (vol. 102)
Jul-Dec 1928 (vol. 103)

Last updated: EST 1928, Oct 23, 2022

2 comments:

AAAndrew said...

First off, this is one of the most useful pages on the internet, for a very narrow definition of use. But for that definition, this list is invaluable.

One issue I've found to serve as a warning to those using the resources.

The Hathi trust version of v.12 1882 has a chunk of pages missing and pages out of order, especially towards the end, e.g. it goes from page 679 to page 768. The Google and Internet Archive versions are fine.

I'm going through each volume and dividing them into issues. I'm up to 12 and this is the first issue I've run across of this magnitude.

Thanks again.
Andrew

AAAndrew said...

I'm finding some real problems with the Hathi Trust copies. In v13, for example, there are 375 pages in the Hathi Trust version, and 978 in the Internet Archive version. that's a lot of missing pages. I found similar gaps and mixing of pages in the v12 Hathi version.

Where it's possible, I think I'll be using anything but Hathi. Shame, because I like the interface better.