About Clarence

Clarence provides detailed information on the newspaper holdings in the newspapers and periodicals collections of the American Antiquarian Society.

At this time Clarence contains holdings information for roughly 75% of the newspaper issues in the collection. Inputting the holdings data for the entire collection is ongoing.

Clarence does not provide digital images of the newspapers. In order to provide digital access to a portion of its newspaper collection, the American Antiquarian Society has partnered with Readex, a division of NewsBank, to create America's Historical Newspapers. This collection of fully-searchable, digitized, historical American newspapers contains nearly 2,000 titles from all 50 states.

Clarence is named in honor of Clarence S. Brigham (1877-1963), a man pivotal in the building of the AAS newspaper collection. Brigham began his service to AAS in 1908 as its librarian and retired in 1959 as its director. His monumental History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, listing over 2,000 titles, was first published in 1947.