Pensapedia:Research
Research is essential for good Pensapedia articles, especially those dealing with the history of Pensacola. Whenever possible, legitimate sources should be cited. This page is a collection of resources to get you started or point you in the right direction.
Online research
Publications
The Pensacola News Journal is the newspaper-of-record for the Pensacola area. It has produced some of the most thorough and reliable coverage of local events. Unfortunately, only articles from 1999 are available in the online archive, and any articles older than a week must be purchased. However, due to the 'inverted triangle' format of journalistic reporting, many of the most important details (dates, names, etc.) can be found in the first few sentences provided for free. Dates are often listed as days of the week relative to the publication date, in which case a "day of the week calculator" is helpful in determining the month and day.
Several other local publications have searchable archives of past issues:
Other websites
- New York Times archives - The New York Times has made available a searchable archive of their newspapers since 1850. Most articles are available for free, either in text format or as PDF scans.
- Escambia County, Florida GenWeb Project - Resource with hundreds of transcribed records, directories and other documents dating back to the 1700s and focusing on the late 1800s and early 1900s.
- American Memory - A project by the Library of Congress with lots of historic photos in the public domain.
- Florida Memory Project - State of Florida project with a photographic collection and other documents.
Library research
The second floor of the downtown library has a local history section with books, periodicals, family papers and other documents that are freely accessible.
The Special Collections department of UWF's John C. Pace Library has perhaps the largest collections of unique historical documents in the area. For preservation reasons, materials can not be checked out, and any photocopies must be made by library personnel, but an online directory of their holdings is available for search.
The Resource Center of the Pensacola Historical Society is located on the second floor of the Beacon Building at 110 Church Street.
