Early baseball guides digitized by the Smithsonian
 

I just stumbled onto some links. There are 64 volumes of early Reach, Spaulding, Police Gazette, and even two volumes of "Lajoie's Baseball Guide" digitized and available for download or just to read online. This was done last year, I wanted everyone who didn't know, to now know this resource is available, its pretty incredible!

http://blog.library.si.edu/2012/05/d.../#.UXawUI46_FL

WOW! That's some amazing stuff. Thanks for the alert.

Matt,
Pretty sure most of those were done earlier than last year, all by the Smithsoniain, but there were a handful that I hadn't seen previously, so maybe it's an ongoing thing? Either way though, thank you for sharing the link. It made me go back over what I had DLed before and I was able to fill some holes as a result. MUCH cheaper than trying to find originals :D

Thanks Lance, I hadn't seen them before, but I'll admit, I assumed they didn't exist online. If you have any links to any other early BB publications digitized I'd love to see more, although these should keep me busy for awhile!

Edit: I just read the post again and it says that several were added... So only a few new ones.

What an invaluable resource. Thanks for the heads-up, Lance!

Cheers,
Mike

There are a few interesting things to be found poking around the archive.org site, mostly originating from the Smithsonian's efforts (presumably they are on a Smithsonian site somewhere too, but I'm not sure where). I have a few besides what was presented in the list, but honestly can't recall where I picked them up. It's always neat to look through these old guides, and there are a lot of minor league teams that you can pretty much only find photos of in old Spalding & Reach Guides (not high quality images, but at least it's something).

Try doing searches for "baseball" or "base ball" plus "guide", "handbook", "record", etc. and see what you turn up.

The LA84 foundation has a pretty good library of old sports magazines and some baseball magazines.

http://www.la84foundation.org/4sl/over_frmst.htm

If you belong to SABR you have access to the Sporting News archives.

Not to mention, a great place for live (music) shows! :D

Is what got me in the door to start with, and that alone is worth the membership price if you ever have to do any period research. Plus there are TONS of other resources and research materials available to members (as might be expected).