War & Dissent: The U.S. in the Philippines 1898-1915; New exhibit at the Presidio

A new exhibit, War & Dissent: The U.S. in the Philippines 1898-1915, opened October 22, 2008 at the Officers' Club in the Presidio of San Francisco. On display until February 22, 2009, it looks fascinating and includes many artifacts and photos from the period, including those of California soldiers who served in the conflict. In addition, "Bindlestiff Studio, a Filipino-American theater group based in San Francisco, has created “Shadows of War,” a unique multi-media production that will be staged each month during the exhibit."

Here is a description from the exhibit's website:

"This mixed media exhibit of photographs, San Francisco monuments, diaries, letters, political cartoons, recordings, maps, and flags looks at the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars from several points of view, including Filipino points of view, in nine themed galleries."

Blackwell Reference Online; Blackwell Companions to American History

The Stanford Library has recently acquired Blackwell Reference Online, an online library that contains over 350 reference volumes published by Blackwell. Of special interest to American historians is the series Blackwell Companions to American History

Each volume in the Blackwell Companions to American History contains chapters written by scholars in the field; the overall set contains titles ranging from A Companion to Colonial America to A Companion to post-1945 America. Whether writing a seminar paper or preparing for Ph.D. oral exams, the Blackwell Companions are an excellent resource to gain a grasp on current historiography. While we have print copies of each title in the circulating and reference collections in Green Library, the online editions allow for cross-searching of multiple titles in the series, including titles dealing with European and World history. Blackwell Reference Online also includes links to articles in History Compass, an e-journal of review articles in history published by Blackwell.

Check out the range of history resources in Blackwell Reference Online. It's an outstanding resource.

A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787-1825

The new issue of Common-Place, an excellent online journal of early American history and culture which I've blogged about before, is devoted to politics in early America, with a special emphasis on voting.

In his introductory essay, historian Jeff Pasley highlights a wonderful new database of early American election returns titled "A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787-1825."

Compiled by Philip Lampi and sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives (with funding by NEH), the database offers a fascinating look at early American elections. As Pasley notes in his essay,

"The New Nation Votes project aims to make available to scholars and the public the life's work of Philip Lampi, an AAS employee who has been collecting early American election returns for more than four decades, most of that in his spare time. Elections before 1828 were long considered the "lost Atlantis" of American political history because there was no complete set of election returns to study. Lampi set out to map those lost coastlines, amassing his collection by hand, from old newspaper reports and local records. In recent years, working with my Beyond the Founders coeditor Andrew Robertson, Krista Ferrante, and others, Lampi has also been trying to correct the cultural myths he believes have emerged about the politics of the founding era in the absence of real electoral data."

Lampi has created a great blog highlighting some of the discoveries he's made compiling the data.

American election ephemera and campaign artifacts

As the election approaches, even the Stanford bookstore is selling action figures depicting Barack Obama and John McCain. Ephemera and artifacts from previous presidential campaigns were the subject of a wonderful 2004 exhibit titled "Get Out the Vote! Campaigning for the U.S. Presidency" (and website) at Cornell University's Department of Special Colletions.

The Museum of the City of New York is currently featuring an exhibit ("Campaigning for President: New York and the American Election") featuring items from the collection of Jordan Wright, a collector of political ephemera who died in June, 2008. Wright's collection is featured in a recent book, Campaigning for President (New York: Smithsonian Books, 2008), which is in Green Library's circulating collection.

For those researching American elections of the 18th and 19th centuries, Stanford users can also search the rich online collection of printed ephemera from the American Antiquarian Society through the database "American Broadsides and Ephemera"

Additional Sanborn maps online; Georgia, Utah, and South Carolina

Building on last month's post re. Stanford's acquisition of the digital Sanborn maps for California (published by ProQuest), a review article in the September 2008 number of the Journal of American History profiles and reviews three sites (all sponsored by university libraries) that provide historical Sanborn maps for Georgia, Utah, and South Carolina (and all in color!):

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Georgia Towns and Cities, 1884-1922

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Utah

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of South Carolina

Library exhibit: American Primers and Readers

Kathy Kerns, Curator for Education Resources and Head of Cubberley Library, has curated a wonderful exhibit showcasing the library's collection of American primers and readers. Currently on display in Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda on the second floor of the Bing Wing of Green Library, Stanford University, the exhibit is drawn from the collection of Richard L. Venezky, a leading scholar in the history of reading and literacy.

Richard L. Venezky (1938-2004), the Unidel Professor of Educational Studies, professor of computer and information sciences, and professor of linguistics at the University of Delaware, and Stanford Ph.D. in linguistics (1965) was a leading expert in the history of literacy and reading. In 2005, Venezky’s family gave his extensive collection of American textbooks to the Stanford University Libraries, where it is housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives.

Read more about the exhibit at:

American Primers & Readers

The exhibition is free and open to the public.