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The main magazine archive shows all issues as cover cards. Each card shows the magazine name, publication year, and the date it was added to the archive.

• Search box: Type in the "Find a magazine..." box to instantly filter by name or year.
• Click a card to open the issue and browse its individual advertisements.
• Blue border on a card means the issue has been flagged for re-scanning.

Each issue page shows all scanned advertisements as a grid of thumbnails.

• Click any ad to expand it and see its full metadata: product name, headline, text, cultural context, hashtags, and AI analysis.
• Favorites: Star an ad to mark it as a favorite. Use the "Show Only Favorites" filter to see just your starred ads.
• Excluded ads: Ads can be excluded from analysis. Toggle "Show Excluded Ads" to reveal them.
• Unanalyzed filter: Toggle "Show Un-analyzed Ads" to highlight ads that haven't been processed yet.
• Prev/Next navigation: Use the arrows at the top to move between magazine issues.

The Search page lets you find specific advertisements across all issues.

• Search by product name, headline, ad text, or keyword.
• Use the magazine filter dropdown to limit results to a specific publication.
• Use the year filter to narrow by decade or specific year.
• Toggle "Analyzed only" to show only ads with AI analysis.

A chronological view of all issues arranged along a timeline. Useful for seeing the distribution of the archive across decades and spotting clusters of activity in particular eras.

A report of all product names found across the archive, organized alphabetically. Shows which products appeared in which magazines and years. Useful for tracking a brand's advertising presence over time.

An overview of the archive's statistics: total issues, total ads, analysis coverage, breakdown by decade, and other aggregate metrics.

Browse all hashtags assigned to advertisements. Tags capture themes, techniques, and cultural patterns found in the ads. Click any tag to see all ads that share it.

Side-by-side comparison of advertisements. Select two or more ads to compare their messaging, visual style, and cultural context across different eras or industries.

Curated essays and stories that weave together findings from the archive. These narratives explore themes like the evolution of persuasion techniques, the rise of consumer culture, and cross-industry patterns.

AI-powered analysis engine that generates reports from the archive data.

• Choose a prompt or write your own query about the archive.
• Set year range to focus the analysis on a specific period.
• The engine analyzes ad metadata across the selected range and produces structured reports, theme maps, or timeline analyses.
• Note: The Insight engine requires the Flask server to be running. On the deployed site, it requires SSL to be configured.

The Admin page (accessible via the link at the bottom of every page) is password-protected.

• User management: Add, edit, and delete users with name, username, password, email, and role.
• Access log: View a log of page visits including time, page, access tier, and browser.
• Export/Import: User data and access logs can be exported as JSON and imported on another machine.

The site uses three access tiers on the deployed version. On localhost, all features are available without a password.

• Tier 1 — Reader: Full access to all features.
• Tier 2 — Researcher: Archive access plus OCR and book features.
• Tier 3 — Analyst: Full archive plus insight reports.