BEV BUTULA: Your ad here

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We have all researched topics that go well beyond the typical boundaries of the law. Just the other week I had the opportunity to research advertisements – old and new. In addition to visiting the local university library, I wanted to see what was available online. As a result of that research, I located a variety of cool websites that are dedicated to the world of advertisement.

I have listed a couple websites dedicated to print ads and a few sites that index commercials:

Duke University Ad* Access – This digital collection consists of more than 7,000 advertisements from U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines. Coverage is from 1911 to the mid 1950s. The ads focus on beauty and hygiene, radio, television, transportation, and World War II.

Advertising Archives – This collection is actually U.K. based, but has an extensive collection of ads from the 1900’s to the present.

Vintage Ad Browser – This website organizes vintage advertisements by topic for easy browsing. There is also keyword searching. An interesting search option is the ability to search by color.

AdForum – While the complete commercial is not provided, the researcher can view snippets of thousands of ads. It appears the actual purpose of the website is for advertisers to view different agency’s work.

Advertolog – This subscription based database houses over 2 million ads and commercials. The researcher can obtain quite a bit of information from the “credits and description” section without a subscription.

Classic TV ads – A YouTube compilation of commercials from the 1950s to the present. Not the easiest way to locate commercials of interest, but entertaining. (Thanks to Baruch College library for the link).

For a list of additional online resources, the University of Pennsylvania library has an excellent list available HERE.