New Database Offers Searchable Newspapers

I recently received an email from a company called Readex that helped digitize and OCR process millions of pages of Latin American newspapers.  Included in this set are  the Jornal do Commerico (Rio de Janeiro), 1884 - 1901 and Estado do São Paulo (São Paulo), 1875 - 1922.   This marks a big change in the availability of these two sources.  Previously, researchers in the U.S. could only get these sources at a few select research libraries.  In Brazil, they are available in the National Library and a few other places, such as the RJ and SP state archives. 

The site is fairly easy to use, offering browsing of each page and article directly through the website or through a .pdf.  I found the pdfs easier and faster to use, although the embedded window viewer highlights search words.

The above image shows the leading story from October 29, 1899, with the dreadful declaration that doctors had diagnosed bubonic plague in Santos.  The bubonic plague, fortunately, did not take on epidemic proportions, but it did spread up the coast, killing in Rio de Janeiro and other sea-board cities.   The plague also helped prompt the Republican, state, and municipal governments to create a series of overlapping urban disease eradication programs (including Rio de Janeiro's, famously directed by Oswaldo Cruz) that eventually contributed enormously to reducing the risk of several of the biggest risks of the day, including yellow fever and gastrointestinal diseases.

The company that offers this product to university libraries or departments gives a description of the collection here.