Historical Advertisements

Database of digitzed online images of American print advertisements, focusing on the subjects of beauty/hygiene, radio, television, transportation, and World War II. Information about date, publication source, company being advertised and target audience is provided.

Database of digitized online images of broadsides and other printed ephemera from the collections of the Library of Congress. The genre search option allows for limiting searches to advertisements, menus, programs, catalogs, etc. Information about date, publication source, and company being advertised is provided for each image.

Database of digitzed online images of American print advertisements. Along with general search options, the ‘Special Features’ search option allows for searching by specific themes and media genres. Information about date, publication source, company being advertised and target audience is provided for each image.

Database of digitized online images of American print advertisements relating to medicine, focusing on the subjects of household products, over-the-counter drugs, personal hygiene, institutional and pharmaceutical advertisements, cigarettes and ‘supplementary documents.’ Information about date, publication source, company being advertised and target audience is provided for each image.

Try a browse search for advertisements to see the most complete list of records. This database is especially useful for its collection of 19th century advertisements for medical items.

Database of digitized online images of posters produced by the WPA. Information about date, sponsoring organization, company being advertised and agency is provided for each image.

Digitized advertisements from American comic books.

Collection of digitized trade catalogs of business that were run by women or that produced products for women.

Digitized collection of American menus from the New York Public Library. Search the entire collection or browse by date. Information about date and physical description is provided for each image. Search by typing in Buttolph and information to which you want to limit your search.

Collection of digitized images that “are multi-national in scope and cover veterans' benefits, war bonds and loans, military recruitment and morale, civil defense, industrial production, freedom and loyalty campaigns, international welfare organizations, prices and rationing, transportation, health and safety, labor organizations, films and theatre, food production, sports and leisure, recruiting of women in military and non-combatant organizations, special events, anti-war movements, and other topics.” Information about date and physical description is provided for each image.

A number of fascinating collections of historic visual material. Includes thousands of "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films, vintage cartoons, newsreels, and similar resources.

The Early Advertising Collection contains European and American printed advertisements dating from 1790 to 1910. The majority of the collection are trade cards of the late nineteenth century.

Collection of streaming video clips of political advertisements from presidential elections.

Fifty Years of Coca-Cola Television Advertisements: Highlights from the Motion Picture Archives at the Library of Congress.

Mostly 19th century trade cards digitized and made available from Harvard University. Do a search for 'trade cards' and limit the search to records that have digital images.

"A digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers. Building on the rich descriptions of individual slaves and servants in the ads, the project offers a personal, geographical and documentary context for the study of slavery in Virginia, from colonial times to the Civil War."

Published political material, ephemera, and artifacts dating to between 1800 and 1976.