Copyright (C) 2001 by Michael Segers, All rights reserved
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Our
Online Grandma's Attic
This
week, my customary rave has turned into ecstatic trance because I have
discovered just about the most fascinating site I've ever found on the Internet.
And since the American
Memory Historical Collections
is part of the program of the Library of Congress, it's a great example of out
tax dollars being put to very good use.
Honestly, just click on that link, and don't waste your time with the
rest of this article. This site
speaks (at times literally) for itself.
More
formally known as the National Digital Library Program, American Memory is a collection of collections of digitized (that is, Internet-accessible)
photographs, manuscripts, books, maps, sound recordings, and motion pictures.
This public/private program cooperates with a variety of other programs
and libraries to open up a virtual grandma's attic for us on the
Internet—without the dust and cobwebs.
Only
a very small percentage of Library of Congress holdings are included, but
everything in the American Memory collections earns its place on the basis of
its value to students, teachers, and researchers.
Many new items and new collections are being added, so this is certainly
a site to bookmark and come back to. Often.
American
Memory almost leaves me speechless—and that is not a very common condition for
me. The best way to communicate its
scope is just to give you a list of its main topics: Agriculture, Art and
Architecture, Business and Economics, Education, Geography, History, Languages
and Literature, Performing Arts, Philosophy and Religion, Political Science and
Law, Recreation and Sports, Social Sciences, Technology and Applied Sciences.
These topics are represented by written materials, such as books and
other printed texts, manuscripts, and sheet music; maps, photos, and prints;
sound recordings and motion pictures.
The
site involves a number of special collections, a number that is still growing.
These ten collections should give you a good idea of things you can read,
look at, and listen to all in one venue:
Baseball
Cards (1887-1914)
Broadsides
and Printed Ephemera (ca. 1600-2000)
Civil
War Photographs
Coca-Cola
Advertising Films (1951-1999)
Dance
Manuals (1490-1920)
Edison
Film and Sound Recordings
Historic
American Sheet Music
Map
Collections (1544-1999)
Mr.
Lincoln’s Virtual Library
Personal
Narratives from the Southern U.S.
Another
way of dealing with this material is to enter something in the search engine and
see what you get. To give you some
idea of the scope of this site, the search engine’s default is a maximum of
500 items. Let's go back a hundred
years, to 1901. It was a year in
which another president was inaugurated, William McKinley (for the second time). It was also the year in which he was assassinated.
You can find his inaugural address as well as a film of the inauguration.
You can also see photos and read news stories and proclamations
associated with his death.
But,
if you enter the year 1901 in the search engine, you can also read "An Old
Timer's Dictionary" (personal narratives) and see photos of "Graves
moved from Shumate's Branch," "Tlingit totem pole" in Ketchikan,
Alaska, and "Nez Perce Chief Joseph poses in blanket outdoors." Sheet music includes "Raz ma taz," “Mighty Lak a
Rose,” and “The Voo-doo Man.” On
more serious matters, you can read reports from the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
Of
course, your entry of 1901 may be misleading, because you will also have the
chance to read the ninety-eight stanzas of Eliot,
a Poem by William Ellery Channing, who died in 1901.
You'll also be able to view a later photo of a "trailer camp for
defense workers of the Vultee Aircraft Plant. Nashville, Tennessee,"
because its photographer, Peter Sekaer, was born in 1901.
Some
of the items in these collections are protected by copyright, but as far as I
can tell, all of them are available for fair use by students and teachers, and I
can imagine that students and teachers could find quite a lot of use for this
site. A teacher could compile materials from this site into a
unique multi-media e-book
for students.
After
spending hours roving through the American Memory Historical Collections site,
it gets my very wildest rave: if you didn't have anything else on the Internet,
except that site (and, of course, out own little free-net so that you could
access it), it would certainly be worth your time and money to get a computer.
While
we are on the subject of American history, have you checked your pockets lately?
The Mint's series
of state quarters
has entered its second year, with the New York quarter. Of
course, February rolls around with a lot of historical echoes, and every
February is officially Black
History Month.
No
matter how you may feel about the previous resident of the White House or the
current one, our country's predictably swift and efficient change of leaders
once again is a marvel and a model for democracies around the world.
It is certainly a good time to pause and savor the best of our American
Memory. Keep your feet dry and, if
your heart is running low on noble thoughts or even a few good laughs, the American
Memory Historical Collections
site can give you a quick pick up.