AIDSArchive.com tells the story of HIV/AIDS with newspaper articles

Archive contains more than 50,000 newspaper pages that detail the history of HIV/AIDS.

(PRWEB) April 9, 2006 -- NewspaperARCHIVE.com has just released AIDSArchive.com, a free newspaper archive of 50,000 newspaper pages from around the country that contain articles about HIV/AIDS. The archive includes news stories from 1983 when French scientists discovered the HIV virus, articles about President Ronald Reagan's 1987 declaration that AIDS was "public health enemy No. 1," along with thousands of other headlines regarding the disease.

With the use of Adobe Reader and Optical Character Recognition technology, researchers can quickly obtain articles about HIV/AIDS by searching with key words or dates. For example, to find newspapers about AIDS activist and victim Ryan White, just type in his name. If a researcher is looking for articles on a specific date, such as November 8, 1991, the day after basketball superstar Magic Johnson retired due to the HIV virus, the date can be selected on the Advanced Search page.

"The history of AIDS is filled with indifference, hatred, intolerance and eventually acceptance and action," said Greg Hollingsworth, researcher for the AIDSArchive.com. "The newspaper articles within this archive give readers a glimpse into the history of a subject that has not left the spotlight for 25 years."

Along with the newspaper archive, AIDSArchive.com contains a brief timeline on the history of HIV/AIDS that is told through newspaper accounts. For example, the timeline begins in 1981 where an article from the Syracuse Herald Journal titled "2 deadly diseases strike homosexuals" details the CDC's announcement of an alarming increase in reports of Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocystis in gay men.

"The archive includes stories about AIDS activist and victim Ryan White, celebrities like Arthur Ashe and Rock Hudson, as well as others who have lived through the fear and hysteria AIDS caused in the late 1980s and early 1990s," said Jeff Kiley, General Manager of NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

AIDSArchive.com is part of a series of free newspaper archives sponsored by NewspaperARCHIVE.com that include AsbestosArchive.com, TitanicArchive.com, CollegeBasketballArchive.com, ProBaseballArchive.com, FBIArchive.com and September11Archive.com.

Researchers interested in finding more information about AIDS/HIV can also go to NewspaperARCHIVE.com where there are 999,598 newspaper pages with the word AIDS and 262,575 on HIV. Articles written before the term "AIDS" was used can also be found in NewspaperARCHIVE.com by searching for "Kaposi's sarcoma" or "Pneumocystis."

NewspaperARCHIVE.com, the largest newspaper database available online, is owned by Heritage Microfilm and began in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1999.

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