I'd like to share with you the primary-source sites I use when researching words-a-day. They may help you in your own research when interesting questions come up, but frankly, I have a more selfish motive. Perhaps some of you, particularly our many librarians, can point me to other useful sources that I can access.

It's become a real problem for me. Definitions are easy to find, via one-look, and OED. (If a term is not defined there, then it's probably used so infrequently that it will have few google-hits, few enough that one can go through them comprehensively.)

The problem comes up in finding the word-in-use, either as illustrations or to trace the etymology. (Realistically the tasks are different, for on you want recent quotes for the former, and old quotes for the latter.) My sources are listed below; I'd appreciate any comments, help, or information on other good sources.

• Google: unproductive: mostly hits from personal websites, burying any "reputable authors" that may appear
• Newspaper/magazine archives: generally unusable (but see 'wishlist', below), for they require payment for each article you want to see in full.
• Google-news: useable authors, but it covers only the last month. Hence a very limited selection of quotes, and useless for tracing etymology.
• Amazon.com ('search inside the book' feature): quite useful, but slow. Rarely goes back far enough to trace an etymology.
• findarticles: not bad. Reasonably broad collection of magazines. But the blurbs from the search don't show you the word-in-context, so you have to bring up each article individually.
• Time magazine archives (1923-present): useful: subscribers can see any article free. Subscription may be available from your library.
• Older US publications: Making of America (about 8,500 books) and Nineteenth Century in Print (about two dozen periodicals)
  
  Wish list:
• Are any newspaper/magazine archives available without a per-article change, through libraries, etc.? Particularly those collecting multiple publications, such as newslibrary?
• newspaperarchive.com: a broad archive of small-town US newspapers, going back a long way. May be good for etymology, but requires fee. I see their price has gone down; I may bite the bullet.
• Can anyone comment on Proquest or on the US Library of Congress site?
  
• For this purpose, any other recommendations?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordcrafter,

There's Libraries and Archives Canada (http://www.collectionscanada.ca/collection/index-e.html)

It's the Canadian equivilent of the Library of Congress.

I have no idea what they have or what sort of results you'll get but the price is right (free)