Project Update

Just a quick update on the status of the final project.

I've begun combing through the Library of Congress's digital database of newspapers published between 1789 and 1924 in all states in an attempt to ensure that I will be able find continual advertisements for the same person, which would be ideal to track the variations in advertisements and possibly their travels.

The first keyword search I tried was Spiritualism which while returning many results, most were articles. But that at least lead to the terminology which would help narrow down results. Seance, Psychic, and Occult were the next keywords to try. As with spiritualism, seance and psychic brought up relevant articles but no advertisements within the first 10 pages (20 results per page).

Occult so far has yielded the best results. I've found over 10 advertisements from 1899 from Montana from the same palm reader which shows a gradual change in advertising graphics.

The nest step for this project will be to specify and look into Virginian newspapers with the same keywords. Once they are collected, then a webpage will be built and galleries made to be sorted by year, occultist, and possibly different trades within the field.

But the project will be put on hold until the other assignments with more pressing deadlines are completed.