---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Memory Fellows <AMFELLOWS@RS8.LOC.GOV>
Poster: "Elizabeth L. Brown" <ebro@LOC.GOV>
Subject: New collections - photos & music
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Announcement of New Ameritech Collections
Available Online as Part of American Memory
With a gift from Ameritech the Library of Congress has
sponsored a competition from 1996 to 1999 to enable
public, research, and academic libraries, museums, historical
societies, and archival institutions (except federal institutions)
to create digital collections of primary resources. These
digital collections will complement and enhance the collections
of the National Digital Library Program at the Library of
Congress.
It is with pleasure that the Library announces the latest
collections to be released as a part of the LC/Ameritech
National Digital Library Competition:
“American Environmental Photographs,1891-1936: Images
from the University of Chicago Library” which can be found
at the following URL:
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/icuhtml/>
and
“African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920: Selected from
the Collections of Brown University” which can be found
at the following URL:
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/rpbhtml/>.
The American Environmental Photographs collection consists
of 4500 photographs documenting natural environments,
ecologies, and plant communities in their original state
throughout the United States at the end of the nineteenth
and the beginning of the twentieth century. Produced
between 1897 and 1931 by a group of American botanists
generally regarded as one of the most influential in the
development of modern ecological studies, these photographs
provide an overview of important representative natural
landscapes in their original, or nearly original, condition
throughout the United States. They demonstrate the character
of a wide range of American topography, its forestation,
aridity, shifting coastal dune complexes, and watercourses.
Comparison of these early photographs with later views
highlight the changes over the decades resulting from
natural alterations of the landscape, disturbances from
construction, mining, and industrialization, and effective
natural resource usage. Henry Chandler Cowles (1869-1939)
and other University of Chicago ecologists took the
photographs on field trips across the North American
continent.
For additional information about this project please visit
the page announcing the University of Chicago's award
which can be found at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award/97award/chicago.html>.
The African American Sheet Music collection consists of
1,305 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from
1850-1920. The collection includes many songs from the
heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and
from the abolitionist movement of the same period. Numerous
titles are associated with the novel and the play Uncle Tom's
Cabin. Civil War period music includes songs about
African-American soldiers and the plight of the newly
emancipated slave. Post-Civil War music reflects the problems
of Reconstruction and the beginnings of urbanization and the
northern migration of African Americans. African-American
popular composers include James Bland, Ernest Hogan, Bob
Cole, James Reese Europe, and Will Marion Cook. Twentieth
century titles feature many photographs of African-American
musical performers, often in costume. Unlike many other sorts
of published works, sheet music can be produced rapidly in
response to an event or public interest, and thus is a source
of relatively unmediated and unrevised perspectives on
quickly changing events and public attitudes. Particularly
significant in this collection are the visual depictions of
African Americans, which provide much information about
racial attitudes over the course of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.
For additional information about this project please visit
the page announcing the Brown University’s award which
can be found at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award/97award/brown.html>.
For information about the LC/Ameritech competition please
visit the competition home page which can be found at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award/index.html>.
Please send any questions about these collections to Please send any questions about these collections to NDLPCOLL@loc.gov.
_________________________________________________________
Elizabeth L. Brown
Automated Reference Services Librarian
National Digital Library Program, LIBN/NDL/VC(1330)
Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20540-1330
ebro@loc.gov telephone: 202/707-2235
Library of Congress American Memory Home Page:
http://memory.loc.gov/
_________________________________________________________
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 04 2000 - 12:24:27 EST