Thursday, December 17, 2009

Americana; recent acquisitions---antiquarian and ephemera

Buchwach, Buck. Hawaii, U.S.A.: communist beachhead or showcase for Americanism? Honolulu: Hawaii Statehood Commission, 1957.

Hall, Edward Henry. An Indignity to our Citizen Soldiers. A Sermon Preached in the First Parish Church, Cambridge, June 1, 1890. Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1890.

Livermore, Leonard Jarvis. Perseverance in the War, the Interest and Duty of the Nation. A Sermon, Preached in the Church of the First Parish, Lexington, Sunday, September 11, 1864. Boston: Press of T.R. Marvin and Son, 1864.

[Sweetser, Seth]. The Strength of the Battle. A Discourse Delivered in the Central Church, Worcester, on the Occasion of the National Fast, Thursday, Sept. 26, 1861. By the Pastor of the Church. Worcester: Printed at the Transcript Office, 1861.

Hoitt, Ira G. Pacific Coast Guide and Programme of the Knights Templar Triennial Conclave at San Francisco, August, 1883. San Francisco: [The Author]: 1883.

Hooper, Edward James. Hooper's Western Fruit Book: A Compendious Collection of Facts, from the Notes and Experience of Successful Fruit Culturists Arranged for Practical Use in the Orchard and Garden. Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, Keys, & Co., 1857.

Southern Pacific Sunset Route. Ten Texas Topics by Texas Tillers and Toilers. Houston: [The Company]; Passenger Department, ca. 1900s.

Official Guide to the Tennessee Centennial and City of Nashville. Nashville: Marshall and Bruce, 1897.

Blair, Lewis H. The Prosperity of the South Dependent on the Negro. Richmond: E Waddey, 1889.

Papers relating to the Garrison mob / edited by Theodore Lyman, 3d. Cambridge [Mass.]: Welch, Bigelow, and Co., printers to the university, 1870.

Stuart, Charles, 1783?-1865. A memoir of Granville Sharp, to which is added Sharp's Law of passive obedience, and an extract from his Law of retribution. New York, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836.

Moffat, James. R. Memoirs of an Old-Timer: Rhyolite, Nevada, 1906-1907. N.P. 1966.

Drake, St. Clair. The Negro veteran and the church. Washington, United Negro and Allied Veterans of America, 1946.

Clayton, Ed, ed. The SCLC story. Atlanta, The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1964.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

McGeorge Bundy Memos

Earlier this fall, before President Obama's announcement of a new strategy in Afghanistan, NYT op-ed columnist Frank Rich discussed Gordon Goldstein's 2008 book Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam in a piece titled "Obama at the Precipice"

Researchers looking to further analyze McGeorge Bundy's role as Special Assistant for National Security Affaris (a post now known as national security adviser) during the early years of Johnson's presidency can turn to a microform set in Green Library--Memos of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs: McGeorge Bundy to President Johnson, 1963-1966. Microfilmed from holdings at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, the set has also has a printed guide, available in Media-Microtext and the SSRC.

The Documentary History of the Ratification Constitution online; Rotunda Press

In partnership with Crown Law Library, SULAIR has recently acquired the online version of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Consitution.

Published by Rotunda Press, the digital publishing division of the University of Virginia Press, "this landmark work in historical and legal scholarship draws upon thousands of sources to trace the Constitution’s progress through each of the thirteen states’ conventions. The digital edition allows users to search the complete contents by date, title, author, recipient, or state affiliation and preserves the copious annotations of the print edition."

Monday, December 14, 2009

Library of Congress--State Digital Resources: Memory Projects, Online Encyclopedias, Historical & Cultural Materials Collections

The Library of Congress has posted a helpful webpage listing a variety of digital history resources produced by States, including multi-state collaborations.

Compiled by Christine A. Pruzin, it's well worth bookmarking.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, digital edition

Scholars of World War II and the Cold War have often made use of the exemplary print edition of Dwight D. Eisenhower's Papers, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. JHU Press has also created an electronic edition of the Eisenhower Papers, which the Stanford Libraries have recently purchased.

The online edition contains the entire 21-volumes of The Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower including significant letters, memoranda, cables, and directives written or dictated by Eisenhower from the years prior to World War II through the full term of his presidency. This massive collection includes documents—many of them previously classified—from private collections and public archives in the U.S. and U.K., as well as papers from the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

The Lazy Scholar; A Not-Quite-Daily Guide to the Digital Archive

Stephen Vider, a graduate student in the History of American Civilization at Harvard, has created an excellent blog called The Lazy Scholar; a "not-quite-daily guide to digital archives in American history, literature, and culture."

As Vider notes, "every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, The Lazy
Scholar provides a lively description of a single online
resource--ranging from art and music to film and literature, 18th
century to the present. Some recent posts have covered topics like
Disability Studies, the Gay Liberation Movement, Lincoln memorabilia, and much more." It's well-written and well worth checking out.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Americana; recent acquisitions--antiquarian, out of print, and ephemera

Allen, Richard, 1760-1831. The life experience and Gospel labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen: to which is annexed the rise and progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America : containing a narrative of the yellow fever in the year of our Lord 1793: with an address to the people of color in the United States / written by himself ... ; with an introduction by George A. Singleton. New York : Abingdon Press, [1960]

Mason, Susanna Hopkins, 1749?-1805. Selections from the letters and manuscripts of the late Susanna Mason: with a brief memoir of her life by her daughter. Philadelphia: Rackliff & Jones, 1836.

Scott, Orange, 1800-1847. An appeal to the Methodist Episcopal church / by O. Scott.
Boston: D.H. Ela, 1838.

Stevenson, J. Thomas (Joshua Thomas), d. 1876. [Memorial of Thomas Greely Stevenson, 1836-1864]. [Cambridge: Welch, Bigelow & Co., 1864]

Chapman, Thomas, fl. 1876. False reconstruction: or, The slavery that is not abolished. Saxonville, Mass.: [s.n.], 1876.

Dabney, Wendell Phillips, 1865-1952. Maggie L. Walker and the I. 0. of Saint Luke; the woman and her work. Cincinnati, O., Dabney Pub. Co. [1927]

Haygood, Atticus G. (Atticus Greene), 1839-1896. Pleas for progress. By Atticus G. Haygood. Nashville, Tenn., Printed for the author, Pub. house of the M.E. church, South, 1889.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Life Magazine in Google Books

Last fall Google Books made the Life Magazine photo archive available to the public; last month they published the entire run (over 1860 issues) of Life Magazine covering the period 1936-1972. A post on the Google Books blog provides more details.

Users can browse all issues of Life

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection online--Cornell University Library

The Cornell University Libraries have digitized the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection, a rich collection of material dealing with all aspects of the anti-slavery movement in the United States.

According to the Cornell site,

"Numbering over 10,000 titles, May's pamphlets and leaflets document the anti-slavery struggle at the local, regional, and national levels. Much of the May Anti-Slavery Collection was considered ephemeral or fugitive, and today many of these pamphlets are scarce. Sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes all document the social and political implications of the abolitionist movement."

Users may search/browse all of the pamphlets in the collection.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Americana; recent acquisitions--antiquarian, out of print, and ephemera

Taylor, Maria. Memorials of Samuel Bowly. Born March 23, 1802, Died March 23, 1884. Gloucester, England: Printed for private circulation by John Bellows, 1884. Samuel Bowly (1802-1884) Anti-slavery abolitionist, temperance advocate,Quaker. Bowly debated pro-slavery advocates and helped to form the Central Negro Emancipation Committee, vital to bringing about emancipation for slaves in England in 1838. Bowly is most noted for his work in the English temperance movement. [DNB] This title is a collection of testimonials and tributes to Bowly's life created by his daughter, Maria Taylor.

Fowler, William Chauncey. The Sectional Controversy; Or, Passages in the Political History of the United States including the Causes of the War Between the Sections. New York: Charles Scribner, 1863.

Garey, Thomas A. Orange culture in California. By Thos. A. Garey. With an appendix on grape culture,by L.J. Rose. San Francisco, Cal., Pub. for A.T. Garey, printed and sold at the Office of the Pacific Rural Press, c1882.

Jones, Laurence C. The Bottom Rail: Addresses and Papers on the Negro in the lowlands of Mississippi and on Interracial Relations in the South during twenty-five years. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1935. (With color picture post card of the Piney Woods School mounted on recto of frontispiece, and with two black and white photos of students and staff laid in.)

Kearney, Belle. A Slaveholder's Daughter. St. Louis: St. Louis Christian Advocate Co., 1900. Kearney (1863-1939) was a temperance reformer, suffragist and state
legislator. She was the first woman to be elected to the State Senate of Mississippi.

Andrews, W.H. Footprints of a Regiment: A Recollection of the 1st Georgia Regulars, 1861-1865. Annotated with introduction by Richard M. McMurry. Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1992.

Cater, Douglas John. As It Was: Reminiscences of a Soldier of the Third Texas Cavalry and the Nineteenth Louisiana Infantry. [Austin]: State House PRess, 1990.

DeRosier, Arthur H., Jr. (editor). Through the South with a Union Soldier. Johnson City: The East Tennessee State University Research Advisory Council, 1969.

Guide for the Observance of the Centennial of the Civil War. Washington, DC: The Civil War Centennial Commission, 1960. Executive Director Karl S. Betts and Chairman U.S. Grant 3rd provide the foreword to this guide for how to prepare and stage memorial observances, educational activities, publications, reenactments and other centennial events. Probable sole edition.

Johnson, Warren Barlow. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, being an account of a journey overland from Eureka, Humboldt co., California, to Webster, Worcester co., Mass., with a horse, carriage, cow and dog, by Warren B. Johnson. Webster, Mass., J. Cort, printer, 1887.

Jones, Benjamin Washington. Under the Stars and Bars: A History of the Surry Light Artillery -- Recollections of a Private Soldier in the War Between the States. Introduction and noted by Lee A. Wallace Jr. Maps by Barbara Long. Dayton: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1975.

Ratchford, J.W. Some Reminiscences of Persons and Incidents of the Civil War. Austin: Shoal Creek Publishers, 1971. Scarce fascimile reproduction of the 1909 edition, of which only four complete copies are known. A remarkable memoir of this Confederate assistant adjutant-general, prefaced by Bluford B. Hestir.

Stewart, William H. A Pair of Blankets: War-Time History in Letters to the Young People of the South. Edited by Benjamin H. Trask. Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Company, [1990]. First of this facsimile edition of the scarce 1911 first edition.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Building the Digital Lincoln website

In this bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln's birth, historians continue to offer rich new insights into the life and times of the nation's 16th president. The September number of the Journal of American History is a special issue--"Abraham Lincoln at 200: History and Historiography," with a number of insightful essays.

In addition, the Journal of American History has partnered with the House Divided Project at Dickinson College, under the direction of Professor Matthew Pinsker to create a fascinating web resource titled "Building the Digital Lincoln."

According to the site, which features a variety of digital texts, dynamic maps, and visual data,

"This special resources site offers a snapshot of how historians and digital humanists have helped to build a new understanding of Abraham Lincoln with a series of innovative and powerful Web-based tools. Their contributions during the decade preceding the Lincoln bicentennial have significantly altered the landscape of Lincoln scholarship by widening and deepening access to a vast array of primary sources. The result has been a more finely detailed portrait of President Lincoln, his relationships, and his career’s most pivotal moments."

MARC records available for titles in Early American Imprints (Evans)

Thanks to the library's new e-loader, MARC records for individual titles in the online database Early American Imprints I (Evans Digital) are now available in the library's catalogs (SOCRATES and SearchWorks). For example, users can now discover Thaddeus Mason's 1793 work "A seleced [sic] catalogue of some of the most esteemed publications in the English language. Proper to form a social library: with an introduction upon the choice of books."

Records for Early American Imprints II (Shaw-Shoemaker) will be online in several weeks.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Southern Oral History Program interviews available online

The Southern Oral History Program, a division of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, has recently made over 500 oral history interviews available online. Topics include the Civil Rights Movement, Environmental Transformations, Southern Politics and Southern Women.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

New African-American historical newspapers online

The Stanford Libraries have recently acquired online access to three new historical African-American newspapers.

The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988) (ProQuest)

Next to the Chicago Defender (which Stanford already owns), The Baltimore Afro-American is arguably the most important newspaper available digitally in ProQuest’s new African American newspapers series, a part of their Historical Newspapers line. It is a full-text, full-image database that is key-word searchable. The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988) was the most widely circulated black newspaper on the Atlantic coast and has been highly influential throughout the nation. It was the first black newspaper to have correspondents reporting on World War II, foreign correspondents, and female sports correspondents. The paper's contributors have included writer Langston Hughes, intellectual J. Sunders Redding, artist Romare Beardon, and sports editor Sam Lacy.

The Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003)

Stanford has also acquired The Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003), also published in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers line. The Atlanta Daily World provides a critical view of African-American life in the 20th century South. Founded by W.A. Scott II, the paper sought to educate, inspire, uplift and promote the expression of the Southern black community. It includes first hand coverage of the infamous Scottsboro Case, as well as reviews of African American literature, such as Richard Wright’s Native Son. Importantly, it provides an African-American perspective on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and coverage of Atlanta’s own Martin Luther King, Jr. Its Southern perspective provides an important regional balance to the two African-American newspapers (in ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers line) that Stanford already owns (the Chicago Defender and the Baltimore Afro-American). Importantly too, it can be cross-searched with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, also in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers line.

The Christian Recorder(1877-1902), in African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century (Accessible Archives)

The Christian Recorder was (and remains) the official newspaper of the African-American Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States.

The Christian Recorder embodied secular as well as religious material, and included good coverage of the black regiments together with the major incidents of the Civil War. The four-page weekly contained such departments as Religious Intelligence, Domestic News, General Items, Foreign News, Obituaries, Marriages, Notices and Advertisements. It also included the normal complement of prose and poetry found in the newspapers of the day.

Stanford already owns earlier issues of The Christian Recorder, as a part of the Accessible Archives collection African American Newspapers: The 19th Century. These newly acquired years of The Christian Recorder detail the challenges faced by African-Americans in the South after the Compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction through the early 20th century. The Accessible Archives interface allows for full-text searching (text has been re-keyed, as well as available through facsimile images). Advanced users may use field, proximity, and boosting searches along with the standard Boolean, wildcard, truncation and parenthesis searches.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Food History

At last year's AHA (American Historical Association) meeting, five sessions focused on the history of food, which the program noted "thus appears to be establishing itself as a major new subfield of historiography."

An excellent syllabus is available for a course on "American Food" being taught by Professor Elizabeth Engelhardt this fall in the American Studies department at the University of Texas at Austin. Food and foodways in the American South are often of particular interest; Jamene Brooks-Kieffer has posted an excellent research guide to sources for Southern foodways on the Kansas State University Libraries website.

My colleague Molly Molloy has created several wonderful research guides for PWR (Program in Writing and Rhetoric) classes dealing with food.

A number of libraries have digitized collections of historical cookbooks. The Michigan State University Library has created a wonderful site titled "Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project" which contains digitized historical cookbooks from their collections.

The New York Public Library has a wonderful culinary history collection , as does the Virginia Tech University Library.

Special Collections here in Green Library has a number of historical cookbooks. To browse them, try a combined search in SOCRATES using "cookery" and restricting the "Library" field to Special Collections.

Finally, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America is a valuable reference source, available online and in print in the Information Center's reference collection.

Friday, September 18, 2009

New Microfilm Collections

The Stanford Libraries have recently acquired two new interesting microfilm collections of manuscript material dealing with 19th century American History:
The Horace Greeley Papers, 1831-1873 and the John Patterson Green Papers, 1869-1910.


An online guide to Greeley's papers may be found on the Primary Source Microfilm Scholarly Guides site (scroll down to the entry for Greeley's papers).

Green, a prominent Ohio African-American legislator often known as the "Father of Labor Day" has a helpful biographical sketch in the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Colonial State Papers available online

The Stanford Libraries have recently acquired an important database for historians of Colonial America and the early modern Atlantic World--Colonial State Papers.

From the publisher's description:

ProQuest’s Colonial State Papers provides researchers with two invaluable sources for the study of colonial American history—the manuscripts that make up the Colonial Papers in the UK National Archives, as well as the printed calendars that describe them.

The National Archives' collection 'CO 1' (full name - Privy Council and related bodies: America and West Indies, Colonial Papers) contains thousands of papers that were presented to the Privy Council and the Board of Trade between 1574-1757, and which relate to England's governance of, and activities in the American, Canadian and West Indian colonies. Colonial State Papers also includes the digitized Calendar of State Papers Colonial - an advanced bibliographic tool providing more than 45,000 records of bibliographic description, covering not only CO 1, but also documents from many other collections, all relating to the American colonies. Calendar of State Papers Colonial consists of bibliographic entries along with full transcriptions, extracts and abstracts, in fully keyed XML.

All documents have been reproduced as full color, high quality images, including a number of unique contemporary hand-drawn maps. Users can search and browse in variety of ways.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Americana; recent acquisitions--antiquarian and ephemera




Saunders, Charles Francis. With the Flowers and Trees in California. New York: McBride, Nast & Company, 1914.

Tallack, William and Wheat, Carl I. The California Overland Express, the longest stage-ride in the world. Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California, 1935.

Welsh, Charles, ed. Chauffeur Chaff, or, Automobilia: Anecdotes, Stories & Bon-mots: Also a History of the Evolution of the Automobile. Boston, MA: H.M. Caldwell Co, 1905.

Comstock, J. L. (John Lee), 1789-1858. A history of the precious metals: from the earliest periods to the present time ; with directions for testing their purity, and statements of their comparative value, estimated cost, and amount at different periods; together with an account of the products of various mines ; a history of the Anglo-Mexican mining companies, and speculations concerning the mineral wealth of California. Hartford : Belknap and Hamersley, 1849.

Franklin, Augustus. The American farrier: adapted for the convenience of the farmer, gentleman, and smith; being a sure guide to prevent and cure all maladies and distempers that are incident to horses, of what kind soever; with a variety of other valuable things relating to them: and also, for the diseases incident to cattle. Strasburg: Printed and sold by Brown & Bowman, 1803.

Commission on Interracial Cooperation. A practical approach to the race problem: Origin and work of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Atlanta, Ga.: Commission, 1939.

Haslam, Andrew J. Forty truths and other truths : an interesting publication on the life of a soldier in the Philippine Islands : also touching on the life and habits of the Tagalos. Manila: Philippine Pub. Co., 1900.

McCorkle, Samuel. Incident on the bark Columbia : being letters received & sent by Captain McCorkle and the crew of his whaler, 1860-1862. Cummington, Mass.: Cummington Press, c1941.

Spurr, Josiah Edward. Through the Yukon gold diggings; a narrative of personal travel, by Josiah Edward Spurr. Boston, Eastern Pub. Co., 1900.

Bramble, Charles A. Klondike; a manual for goldseekers. New York, R.F. Fenno & Co. [1897].

Champlain Society Publications online

For historians researching the history of exploration in North America, the publications of the Canadian Champlain Society comprise an excellent resource. Many of the Champlain Society's publications are available online through a digital collection co-sponsored by the University of Toronto Library.

According to the site,

"The collection contains eighty-three of the Champlain Society's most important volumes (over 41,000 printed pages) dealing with exploration and discovery over three centuries. It includes first-hand accounts of Samuel de Champlain's voyages in New France as well as the diary from Sir John Franklin's first land expedition to the Arctic, 1819-22."

19th century almanacs


Thanks to a recent generous donation, the library has added several scarce 19th century almanacs to our collections.

The Friend of peace almanac, No. 2. For the year of our Lord 1821...
Lebanon, Ohio: Printed by A. Van Fleet & Co, 1820.

The Illustrated Family Christian Almanac for the United States, 1850. New York, NY: American Tract Society, [1849].

The Buckeye Almanac for 1848...Dayton, Ohio: B.F. Ells, [1847].

Ayer's American Almanac [1865 and 1884]. Lowell, Mass.: J.C. Ayer & Co., [1864, 1883].

Wakefield's Western Farmers' almanac, 1884-1885. Bloomington, Illinois: C. Wakefield, [1883].

Dr. O. Phelps Brown's Shakespearian Annual Almanac, 1880. Jersey City, N.J.: [1879].

The Illustrated Family Medical Almanac for the United States...1853. Cincinnati, Ohio: John D. Park [1852].

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Americana; recent acquisitions--antiquarian & ephemera

The library consistently acquires antiquarian, ephemeral and out of print publications in all areas of U.S. history. The following list is a sampling of recently added titles:

Bunn, Matthew, b. 1772? A journal of the adventures of Matthew Bunn. Chicago: Newberry Library, 1962. "First published at Providence Rhode Island, in 1796; A facsimile of the copy in the Everett D. Graff Collection at the Newberry Library."

Nutting, William Washburn, 1884-1924. Western world guide and hand-book of useful information. Chicago: Western World, [1885].

Smith, Franklin Webster. Hand book of the Pompeia: a grand Roman house. Saratoga Springs: Press of E.P. Howe and Son, 1894.

Willis, Bryan. Timber: a living newspaper about deforestation & reforestation / adopted by Bryan Willis; originally written for the Federal Theatre Project by Burke Ormsby & Myrtly Mary Moss; music & lyrics by Edd Key. Seattle, Wash.: Rain City Projects, 1991.

Hale, Edward Everett, 1822-1909. The desert and the promised land: a sermon. Hartford: L.E. Hunt, 1863.

Hovey, George Rice, 1860-1943. Baptist home mission schools for negroes.
New York: The American Baptist Home Mission Society, 1926.

Buck, Lucy Rebecca, 1842-1918. Sad earth, sweet heaven; the diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck during the War Between the States, Front Royal, Virginia, December 25, 1861-April 15, 1865. Birmingham, Ala., Cornerstone [1973].

Louisiana Historical Association. Calendar of the Jefferson Davis postwar manuscripts in the Louisiana Historical Association collection, Confederate Memorial Hall, New Orleans, Louisiana. [New Orleans] 1943.

Garfield Monument Association of the Pacific Coast. History of the monument: with the address at the unveiling. [San Francisco]: The Association, [1885].

Wareing, Ernest Clyde, 1872-1944. The upward way: a 1866--semi-centennial program--1916. Cincinnati, Ohio: The Freedmen's Aid Society, Methodist Episcopal Church, [1916?].

Lindstrom, Gaell. Thomas Moran in Utah. Logan, Utah: Utah State University, [1984?]

Elliott, Wallace W., 1834-1898? Reproduction of Wallace W. Elliott's History of San Bernardino and San Diego counties, California, with illustrations: including material on present-day Riverside county. Riverside, Calif.: Riverside Museum Press, 1965.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Evidence Explained: citation guide for historical sources

Historians are well-versed in using the Chicago Manual of Style as a guide to citing historical sources. Green Library also holds an additional, valuable guide to citing historical sources, Evidence Explained, by Elizabeth Shown Mills. Containing over 1000 citation models, ranging from civil and religious censuses to wills and probate files, Evidence Explained provides essential citation models for many primary source documents not covered in the Chicago Manual of Style.

Monday, April 13, 2009

New content in Women and Social Movements

Alexander Street Press has recently announced a new release of the database Women and Social Movements in the United States. The new release brings the collection to over 35,000 documents (nearly 150,000 pages of text) and includes a new interface.

Stanford provides access to the Scholar's Edition of Women and Social Movements. New contentincludes:

Two new document projects (for a total of over 90 projects) are included:

How Did Women’s Antislavery Fiction Contribute to Debates about Gender, Slavery, and Abolition, 1828-1856?, by Holly M. Kent.

How Did American and Japanese Gender Hierarchies Shape Japanese Women’s Participation in the Transnational WCTU Movement in the 1880s?, by Rumi Yasutake.

According to the release from Alexander Street Press,

"Owners of the Scholar’s Edition will also gain access to more than 72,000 pages of additional State Commissions on the Status of Women, as well as the fifth volume of the biographical dictionary, Notable American Women , which is now complete.
This release also introduces “document archives,” which bring additional primary source documents to the collection. Like the document projects which have been in the collection all along, document archives are primary source documents organized by topic. The difference is that the archives contain less scholar commentary and more primary source documents, giving historians and their students the opportunity to form their own interpretation of the sources. In other words, the archives present primary sources without the pedagogical apparatus. Each archive is prefaced by just a brief introductory essay, but no abstract or annotated sources (as users will find in the more scholarly document projects).

The first document archive is featured in this release and was assembled by scholar Jana Brubaker. The archive focuses on Elizabeth Glendower Evans, a noted Boston reformer in the first third of the twentieth century. This archive contains 79 documents."

New content in America's Historical Newspapers

Readex, publisher of America's Historical Newspapers, a series of databases available to Stanford users, has recently added new content. Here are the new newspaper titles in Series I-V of America's Historical Newspapers, with numbers of issues available and date ranges:

Series I: Times Picayune, New Orleans, Louisiana, 128 issues, 1/1/1837-6/30/1837.

Series II: Duluth News-Tribune, Duluth, Minnesota, 144 issues, 5/16/1881-10/31/1881.

Series III: Emporia Gazette, Emporia, Kansas, 155 issues, 4/1/1896-9/30/1896.

Series IV: American Sentinel, New York, NY, 54 issues, 1/2/1890-1/29/1891.

Series V: Sedan Lance, Sedan, Kansas, 135 issues, 8/24/1892-4/25/1895.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: America and West Indies, 1574-1739 now online

The Calendars of State Papers, Colonial: America and the West Indies are a key resource for the study of colonial America. As part of a new subscription to British History Online, a database sponsored by the Institute of Historical Research (UK), American historians now have online access to this valuable primary source. A print volume of this set is also available in the British documents section on W2 in Green Library.

The Calendars of State Papers are summaries of hundreds of thousands of handwritten documents relating to the administration of England, and its foreign relations, in the early modern period. This set, originally published in 40 print volumes, includes more than 44,000 transcripts and extended abstracts from 1574 to 1739 dealing with colonial affairs (drawn from manuscripts at the National Archives-UK). The material covers a wide range of subject areas, including orders and grants from central government to local administration; the slave trade; piracy; agriculture; boundary disputes; reports of conferences with Native Americans; plantations; immigration; land grants; industries such as shipbuilding and fisheries; relations with the French, Spanish, and Dutch, including intercepted letters; trade; privateering; war; and reports of court cases.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Hard to Find Resources II: Third Party Presidential Nominating Conventions: Proceedings, Records, etc.

Last fall I offered a blog post describing two microfilm sets that contain proceedings from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. This post looks at a third set that focuses on third parties in U.S. presidential campaigns.

Titled Third Party Presidential Nominating Conventions, Proceedings, Records, etc., and published by Micro 8 Publications in 1973, this 7 reel set contains proceedings, party platforms, addresses, pamphlets and other records of a variety of American third parties, ranging from the Anti-Masonic Party of 1830 to the Socialist Party of 1968.

Arrangement of the material on film from Reel 1 through most of Reel 6 is alphabetical by party name and chronological under each, from the Anti-Masonic Party to the International Workingmen's Association; then follows on Reel 6 the Communist Party (1948-1952, 1968) and the Union Party (1936). The last reel contains miscellaneous pamphlets from a number of parties. The sequence of parties on this reel seems haphazard, but the pamphlets under each generally are arranged alphabetically by author.

The invaluable printed guide (shelved in the IC) lists all items in the sequence in which they appear on the film, and provides for each item the reel number location, date, title, and number of pages. N.B.: None of the items in this collection is individually cataloged. However, the library (and/or the Hoover Library and Archives) may have acquired some of these materials separately in printed editions, and cataloged them for either stacks or Special Collections.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Hard to Find Resources I: Columbia University Oral History Microfiche Collection

Green Library has many rich resources which are still only found in microform formats, whether on microfilm reels or microfiche cards. This is the first in a series of blog posts designed to highlight and hopefully expose some of these resources, many of which can be difficult to locate via SOCRATES.

The Columbia University Oral History Research Office is "the oldest and largest organized oral history program in the world." Founded in 1948, the collection contains over 8,000 taped interviews comprising nearly 1,000,000 pages of transcripts.

While many of the interviews (tapes and transcripts) are available only in the Oral History Collection at Columbia, a microfiche project in the 1970s and 1980s transferred over 1,100 interview typescripts to microfiche cards. Stanford purchased Parts I-V; it is cataloged as Microfiche 58 in SOCRATES. A guide, titled Columbia University Oral History Microfiche Collection: A Cumulative Index to Memoirs in Parts I-V is available on the reference shelves in Media-Microtext; Columbia's Oral History Research Office also has a version (including individuals in Part VI) online.

Importantly, most (with the exception of many interviews in Part IV) of the interviews are not cataloged separately in SOCRATES. Fortunately, the microfiche cards are arranged in alphabetical order (regardless of Series #), making it a bit easier to find a given individual.

For Series I of the collection there is a detailed name and subject index for every page of each memoir. Each citation has an abbreviated name of the memoirist and the page on which the item being discussed appears in the memoir. Unfortunately, such a detailed index was only produced for Part I.

Monday, March 16, 2009

James M. McPherson: Presidential Lecture, April 13, 2009

Princeton historian James M. McPherson will be on campus to deliver a Presidential Lecture on April 13 (@ 7:00 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium). The title of McPherson's lecture is "But There was No Peace: The Aftermath of the Civil War," and more details are available on the Stanford Humanities Center's website.

Additionally, the library has created a webpage containing an essay, excerpts, and a bibliography that describe McPherson's work.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Journal of Transnational American Studies; inaugural issue



A new peer-reviewed online journal of American Studies, The Journal of Transnational American Studies, has recently been launched. Edited by Stanford English Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin and sponsored by the American Studies Program at Stanford and the American Cultures and Global Contexts Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the journal is available free online. More about its launch can be found in this article from the Stanford Report.

The inaugural issue features an essay by Stanford historian Gordon Chang, titled "Emerging from the Shadows: The Visual Arts and Asian American History", excerpted from Chang, Gordon H., Mark Johnson, and Paul Karlstrom, eds. Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Mike Wallace Interview--Harry Ransom Center

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has digitized 65 interviews from The Mike Wallace Interview, a pioneering interview program of the late 1950s. The Ransom Center's site provides video (several are in audio/transcript format only) along with transcripts of interviews conducted in 1957 and 1958. Featuring a wide range of guests from politics, entertainment and the media, the digitized interviews include discussions with Henry Kissinger, Earl Browder, Governor Orval Faubus, Kirk Douglas, Malcolm Muggeridge, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. According to the Ransom Center's website:

"Mike Wallace rose to prominence in 1956 with the New York City television interview program, Night-Beat, which soon developed into the nationally televised prime-time program, The Mike Wallace Interview. Well prepared with extensive research, Wallace asked probing questions of guests framed in tight close-ups. The result was a series of compelling and revealing interviews with some of the most interesting and important people of the day.

The Mike Wallace Interview ran from 1957 to 1960, but the Ransom Center collection includes interviews from only 1957 and 1958. In the early 1960s, Mr. Wallace donated to the Ransom Center kinescopes of these programs and related materials, including his prepared questions, research material, and correspondence."

In addition, the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin hosts a companion site, which features "a searchable, annotatable, rich-media version of The Mike Wallace Interview Collection."

Monday, March 2, 2009

Americana; recent acquisitions--antiquarian & ephemera




The library consistently acquires antiquarian, ephemeral and out of print publications in all areas of U.S. history. The following list is a sampling of recently added titles:

Ye A.E.F. Hymnal; a collection of the doughboy lyrics that smoothed the road from Hoboken to the Rhine. Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1918. Drawings by Henry Mayers.

Cumming, John P. More Yank talk: a review of A.E.F. humor: trench and billet. Paris: Lafayette Pub. Co., 1919.

Bailey, Seth Thomas. Henry's pal to Henry; a book of letters to Henry.[Paris] The Stars and stripes, 1919.

Brine, Mary Dow. Bessie, the Cash Girl. New York: Hunt & Eaton; Cincinnati: Cranston & Curtis, 1878.

Breed, David Riddle. The Locust-Scourge in Minnesota. New York: American Tract Society, 1878.

Maryland General Assembly. Correspondence relating to the Insurrection at Harper's Ferry, 17 October, 1859. Annapolis: B.H. Richardson, 1860.

Feval, Paul. The Golden Daggers: A romance of California. Translated from the French...By a Gentleman of Louisiana. Columbia, S.C.: Evans and Cogswell, 1864.

Bradley, Lawson. Official Guide to the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, Portland, Oregon, June 1 to October 15, 1905. Portland, OR: Lewis and Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair, 1905.

Georgia Writers' Project. Atlanta, a city of the modern South. Compiled by workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Georgia. Sponsored by the Board of Education of the City of Atlanta. New York, Smith & Durrell [1942]

Georgia Writers' Project.Augusta; compiled and written by Augusta Unit, Federal Writers' Project in Georgia, Works Progress Administration. Sponsored by City Council of Augusta. Augusta, Ga., Tidwell Printing Supply Co., 1938.

Mountain View (Calif.). Board of Trade. A region of health and prosperity, Mountain View, issued by Board of Trade, Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California. San Francisco,Printed by the Stanley-Taylor Co.,under the direction of "The Register" [1903?]

International Christian Endeavor Convention. "California '97." Sacramento City and County Christian Endeavor Union. [Sacramento: The Union,[1897]

Campbell, Helen. Life story of Helen Campbell, the child evangelist, nine years of age, started preaching July 1924 in San Francisco. Long Beach, CA : [n.s.], 1924.

Cotton Valley, Alabama: a school in the Black Belt. Boston: Woman's Home Missionary Association, [1901?]

Gardner, John Endicott. American-Chinese calendar for 65 years, 1849-1914. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904.

U.S. Sanitary Commission. Information for Army meetings: January 1865. Philadelphia: James Rogers, 1865].

Friday, February 20, 2009

Magnum Photos in ARTstor

ARTstor has recently made the first installment of the Magnum Photos Collection available online. According to the ARTstor announcement,

"We are pleased to announce that the Magnum Photos collection is now available in ARTstor. This first launch of more than 73,000 high-quality photographs of major world events and personalities provides the academic community with access to a selection of Magnum's iconic images. The ARTstor and Magnum Photos collaboration will showcase a total of 80,000 images by this world-renowned group of documentary photographers.

This collection relates to courses of study across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and beyond. The ARTstor community will now be able to access high-quality photographs from around the world, covering industry, society and people, places of interest, politics, news events, disasters and conflict, from the late 1930s to the present day. From the Spanish Civil War to the Gulf War, from Marilyn Monroe to Paul Newman, from John Updike to Toni Morrison, from Christian Dior to Oscar de la Renta, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the crisis in Chechnya, these images capture wars, celebrities, authors, fashion designers, and defining moments in our shared history."

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Lincoln Bicentennial


The Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth (1809-2009) has prompted a wealth of new works and commentary on the life of the sixteenth president.

The Library of Congress has produced a wonderful website detailing many events and exhibits surrounding the bicentennial. The site also includes an interactive time-line and a wealth of links and suggestions for further reading and study.

Oxford University Press maintains an interesting blog and has devoted a number of recent posts to Lincoln. The first is an excerpt of a new biography by Princeton historian James M. McPherson. McPherson was recently at Stanford and delivered a talk in a symposium on Abraham Lincoln and the West, sponsored by the Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West. McPherson will return to deliver the Presidential Lecture on April 13, 2009.

Additional posts on the OUP blog include a series of FAQ’s with Allen Guelzo, author of LINCOLN: A Very Short Introduction, and a look at how Lincoln almost failed by Jennifer Weber author of COPPERHEADS: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, also maintains a wonderfully informative website, while the Newberry Library in Chicago also hosts a number of excellent online exhibits dealing with Lincoln.

At Stanford, the library is very fortunate to have an endowed book fund dedicated to collecting materials dealing with Lincoln and the Civil War era. The fund was established by Mrs. Virginia Fehrenbacher, in honor of her late husband, esteemed Lincoln scholar and Stanford History Professor, Don E. Fehrenbacher. Here are a few recent titles of Lincoln scholarship purchased with the Fehrenbacher Fund:

James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York: Penguin, 2008)

Eric Foner, ed. Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and his World (New York: Norton, 2008)

Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson, eds. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The Lincoln Studies Center Edition (Urbana: Knox College and University of Illinois Press, 2008)

John Stauffer, Giants: The parallel lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (New York: Twelve, 2008)

Gerald J. Prokopowicz, Did Lincoln Own Slaves? And other frequently asked questions about Abraham Lincoln (New York: Pantheon, 2008)

Monday, February 16, 2009

Guide to historical research

A colleague at Yale forwarded this great link, a guide to research composed by historian William Cronon.

It's well worth a careful look.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Online exhibit: The Church Awakens: African-Americans and the Struggle for Justice

The Archives of the Episcopal Church USA has a fascinating new web exhibit that chronicles the relationship between the Episcopal church and African-Americans.

The exhibit contains a wealth of textual, visual and audio-visual material, including an in-depth look at the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU) and its participation in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Magazines on Google Book Search

The Google Book Search Project has recently added a number of American magazine titles, including Ebony, Jet, Popular Mechanics, and many others to its database. All are full -text searchable and have great imaging, including advertisements. Read more about these magazine archives at the Official Google Blog.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Historian Jill Lepore on colonial American newspapers

Jill Lepore, Professor of History at Harvard is also a staff writer at the New Yorker Magazine. Her latest essay for the magazine, titled "Back Issues: The day the newspaper died," is a fascinating look at the history of American newspapers in colonial America and the early republic.

In the course of her essay, she discusses a variety of newspapers, including the New-England Courant and the Boston Gazette, both of which are available in full-text through the database America's Historical Newspapers.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Historic American Sheet Music

Sheet music can be an excellent source for images and lyrics relating to popular culture.

The Duke University Library has compiled an excellent guide to many collections of historic sheet music; the Chicago Jazz Archive at the University of Chicago Library has compiled a similar list. The following are links to some notable digital collections:

Historic American Sheet Music (Duke University Library)

E. Azalia Hackley Collection (Detroit Public Library; African-American sheet music)

Templeton Sheet Music Collection (Mississippi State University Libraries)

University of Oregon historic Sheet Music Collection (University of Oregon Library)

Iowa Digital Library Historic Sheet Music Collection (University of Iowa Libraries)

19th Century California Sheet Music (Mary Kay Duggan, UC-Berkeley)