The guide contains both print and Internet resources. You’ll find:
+ Early Works and Compilations
+ Works About Individual Inventors
Source: Science Reference Section, Science, Technology, and Business Division, Library of Congress
Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Women of Invention: Women Inventors and Patent Holders: A Recently Published Science Reference Guide from the Library of Congress
Thursday, October 1st, 2009New From Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam: YouTube Channel
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Today the Anne Frank House is launching the official Anne Frank Channel on YouTube containing existing and new images about Anne Frank. These include excerpts from interviews with Otto Frank and witnesses like Miep Gies, as well as [our emphasis] previews of the virtual museum of the Anne Frank House, soon to be opened to the public. With the Anne Frank Channel on YouTube, people around the world will be able to explore the life and significance of Anne Frank through unique images.
The channel opens with the only existing film footage of Anne Frank, made during the wedding of her neighbor on 22 July 1941. In another film, Nelson Mandela talks about the strength he derived from Anne Frank’s diary during his imprisonment on Robben Island. The channel will also contain a series of new interviews with people who knew Anne Frank personally.
And there’s more. On YouTube, visitors can follow the development of the virtual museum, which will soon enable people to visit the Anne Frank House online. Visitors can watch the ‘making of’ the online secret annex in 3D. The virtual museum will be launched on 28 April 2010 as part of the 50-year anniversary celebrations of the Anne Frank House museum.
Access the Official Anne Frank YouTube Channel
Source: Anne Frank Museum
Hat Tip: Library Stuff
Resource of the Week — National Museum of the American Indian: Collections Search
Monday, September 28th, 2009Resource of the Week — National Museum of the American Indian: Collections Search
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
The National Museum of the American Indian — the 16th Smithsonian Institution museum — which opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2004, is the first U.S. national museum dedicated solely to Native Americans. And we think teachers, scholars, librarians and researchers everywhere will be interested in the excellent collection search tool available on the museum’s website.
Welcome to NMAI Collections Search, which includes a representative sample of NMAI’s object and historic photo collections. Each item is accompanied by basic, standardized information. To become familiar with the site, start with one of the Collection Highlight tours or search the website using this page or the tabs at the top.
Our goal is to include as many items as possible, but objects and photos will be added only when NMAI staff have reviewed the accuracy of accompanying information. Items identified as culturally sensitive or which are no longer part of NMAI’s collections will not appear on this website. Please contact NMAI about providing additional information or correcting any errors.
Records for many objects include their original catalog cards, which often date to the early 1900s. These cards may include tribal names and terminology considered unacceptable or offensive today but they have been included to illustrate the information that originally accompanied the objects.
Five different search options are available:
There are different functions available depending upon which search option you’re using, but under all of them are check boxes that allow you to restrict your search to any combination of the following: archaeological Items, ethnographic Items, modern and contemporary arts, photographic collections. Or you can just check “All of the above categories” if you want to cast the widest net possible. Search help is just a click away.
We enjoyed browsing the collection highlights area at the bottom right of the page, which included such categories of interest as beadwork and toys and games.
Bibliographers and catalogers will be interested in the thesaurus:
The following reference lists represent NMAI controlled terminologies in their respective hierarchies. Use these reference lists if you are in doubt about what terms are used or how they should be entered for searches. If you cannot quickly locate a term you may use your browser’s “Find” (”Ctrl” + “F”) option combination to see if a term is listed. When you click on a term in a Reference List, a search is automatically performed across all applicable collections categories.
Even if this is not a subject area of interest to you, the site as a whole is well worth browsing just because it’s so…elegantly done.
ATF Transfers Alexander Hamilton Document to National Archives
Friday, September 25th, 2009ATF Transfers Alexander Hamilton Document to National Archives
(T)he Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) transferred an original 18th century Alexander Hamilton document to the National Archives. The document will become part of the permanent holdings of the National Archives and will be preserved in a locked, temperature and humidity-controlled stack area in its College Park, Md., facility.
The document, dated Dec. 18, 1790, and signed by the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, is a circular letter distributed to the customs agents of the United States. Secretary Hamilton’s letter describes the method for measuring the proof of distilled spirits for taxation.
…
At the end of the American Revolution, the national government owed $37 million dollars in debt, a figure dwarfed by the $114 million owed by the states. At Hamilton’s urging, the federal government assumed responsibility for the debt of the states. One of the first attempts by Congress to reduce the national debt was the Tariff of 1789, which placed duties on the import of distilled spirits among other items. Quickly realizing that these duties were not generating enough revenue, a higher tariff was passed by Congress in 1790. The letter ATF transferred to the National Archives describes how duties from the Tariff of 1790 would be determined.
Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
Delaware Public Archives Moves Photo ID Project Online
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009For three years, libraries around the state have displayed Delaware Public Archives photos in the hopes of identifying John Does. Library patrons have ID’d more than 1,900 people so far, a number the archives hopes will jump now that people can go online to search old photos for classmates, family members and friends.
The Hometown Delaware program is full of photos mostly from the 1930s to 1950s. A small group of the archives’ more than 800,000 pictures are at http://archives.delaware.gov, and categorized into the three counties for easy searching. When people recognize someone, they can click on a link to email the archives with the person’s name.
[Snip]
The online move is targeting a different demographic than the effort at libraries, according to Tom Summers, outreach services manager. The library tour started to reach people who might not have access to a computer or weren’t familiar with the Internet. [Lori] Hatch [information resource specialist] said she hopes some younger visitors who have grown up online might help by identifying family members.
Much More in the Complete Article
Source: Dover Post
New: LIFE Magazine Archive Now Available via Google Books
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009I’m excited to announce that starting today, visitors to Google Books will be able to search and browse even more magazines on Google Books. We’ve partnered with Life Inc. to digitize LIFE Magazine’s entire run as a weekly: over 1,860 issues, covering the years from 1936 to 1972.
Browse LIFE Magazine Archive (via Google Books)
You can also “search inside” a specific issue (look for the search box in the left-hand column)
To see all the entire issue on a single page, select the issue you’re interested in, click the “read this magazine” link, and look for the magnifying glasses near the top of the page. Here you can:
+ decrease/increase the size of a page
+ view one page at a time
+ view facing pages
+ view the entire issue (look for the 4 box icon)
+ increase the size of the “all page” view
The blog post also contains other methods to access magazines via Google Books
See Also: LIFE Photography Collection (via Google Images)
This collection went live at the end of March, 2009
Source: Inside Google Books
Free Hispanic Heritage Month Resources from Gale/Cengage
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009We’ve mentioned several resources to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month on ResourceShelf. You can find the posts here and here.
Now, we’ve just learned that Gale/Cengage is offering at GaleSchools.com several free items to celebrate HHM.
The page of free resources is accessible here and includes:
+ Read biographies of significant Hispanic individuals
+ Take a Hispanic culture quiz
+ Follow a timeline of events that helped shape the Hispanic culture
+ Explore Hispanic holidays, musical genres and other topics with information culled from Gale resources
+ Visit other pertinent sites and find suggestions for further readings
Source: Gale/Cengate (via E-Mail)
Newspaper Digitization: Chronicling America Keeps Growing, 192,000 Pages from AZ, OH, PA, WA Added to Collection
Friday, September 18th, 2009From the Announcement:
On Sept. 17, the National Digital Newspaper Program added more than 192,000 historic newspaper pages to the Chronicling America Web site, hosted by the Library of Congress. The site now provides free and open access to 1,442,000 pages from 171 titles, that were published between 1880 and 1922 in 15 states and the District of Columbia. This most recent update expands date coverage for many titles already represented in the site and includes content from 4 new states–Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
In addition to new content, the site also now includes links to other ways to use the searchable newspapers available in Chronicling America, including:
- links to Topic guides for events and subjects found in Chronicling America,
- links to use of Chronicling America in the LC Flickr photostream,
- and detailed documentation of the Chronicling America API.
Chronicling America passed the one million digitized page mark in June.
See Also: Now Available: Webcast: One Millionth Page in Chronicling America (8/2009)
Source: National Endowment for the Humanities, Library of Congress
New Addition to American Memory Project: American English Dialect Recordings, Over 100 Hours of Recordings
Friday, September 18th, 2009The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches.
From the Web Site
The survey’s documentation covers social aspects of English language usage in different regions of the United States. It reveals distinctions in speech related to gender, race, social class, education, age, literacy, ethnic background, and occupational group (including the specialized jargon or vocabulary of various occupations). The oral history interviews are a rich resource on many topics, such as storytelling and family histories; descriptions of holiday celebrations, traditional farming, schools, education, health care, and the uses of traditional medicines; and discussions of race relations, politics, and natural disasters such as floods.
The collection includes recordings from forty-three states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and parts of Canada. They were made from 1941 to 1984, with the bulk being recorded between 1968 and 1982. In some cases, transcriptions made by the collectors are available as part of this web presentation.
Access the American English Dialect Recordings
It’s possible to browse the collection by:
+ Title
+ Name
+ Subject
+ Place
Source: American Memory Project (via Library of Congress)
See Also: From the British Library: Sounds Familiar (3/2007)
Online Database: Guests Receive Demo of World Digital Library (WDL) Highlighting Educational Potential of Resource; 11 New Countries Join WDL
Thursday, September 17th, 2009The Library of Congress today [September 15] demonstrated the potential offered by the World Digital Library to enrich the learning of students, both in the classroom and at home, for more than 100 guests in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building.
“The world’s greatest treasures, once only available through an in-person visit to a national library or museum in their home nations, now are available to anyone in the world with Internet access,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “And through our joint venture with UNESCO and 49 partner institutions in 32 nations, this information can be obtained in any of seven languages.”
[Snip]
A new WDL display, on the south side of the Jefferson Building’s first floor just beyond the Orientation Gallery, offers two Internet-access computers. From these keyboards, visitors can explore the WDL and its holdings. The exhibition also lets onlookers watch on a screen above one of the keyboards as the WDL is being “surfed.” The World Digital Library features manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs. It can be accessed at www.wdl.org.
[Snip]
At the time WDL was launched in April, there were 34 partners in 21 nations. Since that time, 11 new partners from eight nations have signed on, giving users of the website access to digital material from 45 partner institutions in 29 countries. Since its launch, the site has been accessed by more than 4.3 million users.
Access the World Digital Library
Source: LC
See Also: ResourceShelf Overview Articles about World Digital Library at Launch (4/2009)
Articles: 1 ||| 2
Online Database: Footnote.com Providing Free Weekly Updates to Social Security Death Index (SSDI)
Thursday, September 17th, 2009From an E-Mail from Footnote.com:
The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is one of the most widely used and valuable databases for genealogy research…Footnote has created a page for each record that includes:
+ The complete indexed information
+ A place to add additional facts
+ A photo gallery
+ A timeline
+ A map
+ A place to add stories and comments
Access the SSDI Database (Updated Weekly, Free)
Btw, note the many ways to refine search results. They are located in the left-side column of a results page.
Note: Two other places to find the SSDI (free) are Ancestry.com (updated weekly) and FamilySearch.org.
Both services also provide the social security number of the person you are hoping to locate.
Note: Footnote.com also provides both free and fee-based services. You can compare free vs. fee on this page.
See Also: Footnote.com and the National Archives (NARA) Launch an Interactive Vietnam War Memorial (3/2008)
See Also: Footnote Blog
New Resource: Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation Launches Web Portal Showcasing Television’s Greatest Stories
Thursday, September 17th, 2009The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation has launched EmmyTVLegends.org, a new web video portal offering free, public access to the Archive of American Television, the most comprehensive videotaped interview collection of its kind. It features revealing conversations with more than 600 influential figures [2000+ hours] that have shaped the television industry from its inception to present day, and includes little-known anecdotes, unique perspectives, and eyewitness accounts from top names in TV.
This ambitious, new website has been more than a decade in the making. Since 1996, the Archive has conducted in-depth interviews with television’s biggest
stars, industry legends, and crucial behind-the-scenes players who make television magic. In 2005, the Archive began to release the interviews online
to the public, but until now there was no easy way to search and navigate the footage.
Access EmmyTVLegends.org
Advanced Search Interface
Much more in the complete announcement.
Source: Reuters
Hat Tip: AMIA Newsbriefs
Digitization, Flickr, and Photosynth: Rome Was Built In A Day, With Hundreds Of Thousands Of Digital Photos
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009The ancient city of Rome was not built in a day. It took nearly a decade to build the Colosseum, and almost a century to construct St. Peter’s Basilica. But now the city, including these landmarks, can be digitized in just a matter of hours.
A new computer algorithm developed at the University of Washington uses hundreds of thousands of tourist photos to automatically reconstruct an entire city in about a day.
The tool is the most recent in a series developed at the UW to harness the increasingly large digital photo collections available on photo-sharing Web sites. The digital Rome was built from 150,000 tourist photos tagged with the word “Rome” or “Roma” that were downloaded from the popular photo-sharing Web site, Flickr.
Earlier versions of the UW photo-stitching technology are known as Photo Tourism. That technology was licensed in 2006 to Microsoft, which now offers it as a free tool called Photosynth.
“With Photosynth and Photo Tourism, we basically reconstruct individual landmarks. Here we’re trying to reconstruct entire cities,” said co-author Noah Snavely, who developed Photo Tourism as his UW doctoral work and is now an assistant professor at Cornell University.
Source: Science Daily
Digital Archives: National 9/11 Memorial and Museum Wants Your Help as New Video is Released; Plus A Small Collection of 9/11 Archives
Friday, September 11th, 2009These new images [and video] are just a few minutes among hundreds of hours of amateur video and images being collected by the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center which has launched a website containing examples of citizen journalism of the tragedy.
According to today’s press release the museum has issued a world-wide invitation for the public to submit media related to the 9/11 events through a new online initiative “Make History.” 911History.org will become a permanent digital archive and help build an interactive, mapped time line of events on the web.
[Snip]
Each photo will be placed alongside current Google “Street View” photos of various locations. Users can click on locations, themes or time of day to view the footage or images from the locations they were actually taken reports Sky News.
Source: Digital Journal
Access National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center (Home Page)
A Few Web-Based Resources to Assist in Remembering the Tragedy of September 11, 2001
+ September11.Archive.Org (via Internet Archive)
+ September 11 Television Archive (via Internet Archive)
+ Remembering 9/11 (Library of Congress)
+ America Transformed (NPR)
NPR Coverage Sept. 11 – Oct. 8, 2001. Includes audio archives.
+ Voices of Reflection National Public Radio 9/11 Coverage
From September 11, 2002.
+ Audio: Understanding America A Year After 9/11 (Minnesota Public Radio)
+ Audio: Commission Hearings (via NPR)
+ 9/11 Commission Records (via National Archives and Records Administration)
See Also: 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance
What you can do.
A Brief Look Inside the Walt Disney Archives
Thursday, September 10th, 2009For the last 50 years, inside an unmarked warehouse here, a historic movie prop has rested in a deep, deep sleep. Last month a Walt Disney Company archivist awakened it.
Becky Cline, manager of the Walt Disney Company archive, with the storybook used for the opening scene of “Sleeping Beauty,” the animated classic from 1959, in Glendale, Calif.
Wearing white gloves, Becky Cline, manager of the sprawling repository, gently opened a crate containing the giant bejeweled storybook used for the opening scene of “Sleeping Beauty,” the animated classic from 1959. “We have to be really, really careful with this,” Ms. Cline said, almost in a whisper.
The prop, along with dozens of other specimens from Disney films that have long been kept under lock and key, will headline an unusual exhibition of memorabilia that opens on Thursday and runs through the weekend at the Anaheim Convention Center in Southern California.
The exhibition, “Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives,” will also include modern grails (Miley Cyrus’s blond “Hannah Montana” wig) and items from Walt Disney’s own office (like the rotary-dial telephone, dingy cord and all). “We would never clean it — that’s Walt’s grime,” Ms. Cline said.
Source: NY Times
Hat Tip: AMIA Newsbriefs
Digitization: Project Makes Old SC Newspapers Available Online
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009South Carolinians will soon find it easier to read newspaper accounts about the start of the Civil War, discriminatory Jim Crow laws and Gov. Benjamin Tillman’s South Carolina Dispensary, which was once the only entity legally authorized to sell alcohol in the state.
The University of South Carolina’s S.C. Digital Newspaper Project will make available online newspapers published throughout the state from 1860 to 1922.
The University Libraries landed a two-year $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities last spring to launch the project, said Kate Boyd, digital collections librarian. It will use the money to scan 100,000 pages of selected South Carolina newspapers and make them available through the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America database.
The first phase of the project will be ready in time for the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War in 2011, Boyd said.
[Snip]
The university plans to expand the project over time to include more newspapers, and to create a site for South Carolina newspapers separate from the Library of Congress site.
Source: The Post and Courier
See Also: Chronicling America (Over 1 Million Digitized Historic Newspaper Pages from 1880-1922)
See Also: NewspaperArchive.com
See Also: Google News Archive Search
Constitution Day Resources for September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009Constitution Day is September 17, 2009. From the Announcement:
Looking for resources for Constitution Day activities? The Library of Congress has a variety of sources you can use. Explore the Creating the United States online exhibit http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/creatingtheus/Pages/default.aspx and learn more about the impact of the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence on U.S. history. Explore the interactive Constitution where students can learn more about the Constitution and origin of important parts of the Constitution. The Learn More will lead you to links for other exhibits, online resources, webcasts and lessons you can use to help students learn more about the Constitution.
See Also: National Constitution Center Constitution Day Resources
Source: LC / National Constitution Center
Serials: BusinessWeek Celebrates its 80th Anniversary
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009BusinessWeek’s Jim Ellis, the Assistant Managing Editor of the magazine, provides a 4 minute 30 second video showing a selection of historical covers.
Source: BusinessWeek
