A Usable Past

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From GRITtv:

This is one of my favorite sites. The Museum of the Moving Image has a number of digital projects to peruse, but I suggest going directly to The Living Room Candidate where you can watch campaign ads from 1952 to the present. Fabulous. Remember to fear the bomb.

LBJ‘s 1964 advertisement, “Peace Little Girl (Daisy).

Just ’cause.

All images from LIFE Magazine.

For a digital history class assignment, I spent time investigating a number of websites and online resources relating to digital scholarship.  Some of these sites relate directly to my research interests, others deal with events I’ve experienced, and others utilize images to express emotions and tell stories.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is a thorough online collection of data about the trans-Atlantic slave trade that operated from the 16th until near the end of the 19th centuries.  This site is chock-full of information and statistics researchers can take advantage of, including an African Names Database with details on 91728 enslaved Africans, and records about individual ships that were deployed across the Atlantic.

Now, I don’t know too much yet about Google Books, including how much free access people will have to the holdings in their collection, but their magazine collection is a knock-out.  I have spent countless hours perusing  old issues of LIFE magazine with great pleasure.  My only complaint with the set up is you are unable to select images or text from the issues, which is highly irritating when you find something that you’d love to have in hard copy.  On the plus side, Google Books has a wide selection of Afro-American magazines, including JET, Black World/Negro Digest, The Crisis, and Ebony.

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History offers many great sources of digital history, and their “America On the Move” site is no exception.  Focusing on the effect of transportation on American history, the site allows you to browse through their collections via theme, collection, or exhibition, and there are many ways to search for specific topics, timeframes, and regions.  Seeking artifacts relating to rail transportation in the South Atlantic region of the US between 1945-1970?  Look no further.

Ball State University Libraries in Muncie, Indiana have three collections of women’s history materials newly available digitally through the Ball State University’s Digital Media Repository.

From the Women’s Collections Roundtable:

Middletown Women’s History Digital Collection
The Middletown Women’s History Digital Collection provides online access to archival materials documenting the experiences of women in Muncie, Indiana from the 1880s through the 1930s. It includes diaries, minutes, and correspondence, photographs and other documents from the wealth of resources available in Ball State University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections. The collection is organized based on the six areas used by Helen and Robert Lynd in their seminal sociological study of Muncie, or “Middletown,” in the 1920s and 1930s. This project was supported by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the Indiana State Library.

The Man Haters Film Collection
The Man Haters is a rare 35mm silent movie filmed in Muncie, Indiana in 1915. The film was produced by Basil McHenry, a traveling film producer from Akron, Ohio. He financed the film with sponsorship by Muncie’s Majestic Theater and The Muncie Evening Press newspaper. Readers of the Press were asked to cast their votes for the leading actresses using coupons printed in the paper. Filming began in Muncie, Indiana on November 3, 1915 and the movie opened at the Majestic Theater on November 15, 1915. Basil McHenry also produced similar films in other towns in Indiana and Ohio.

This digital collection contains the ten minute original version and a longer documentary version of The Man Haters film, newspaper clippings about the contest, still photographs from the film, and a booklet about history of the film.

Eleanor Roosevelt Speech Collection
The Eleanor Roosevelt Speech Collection includes digital audio,photographs, and a transcript documenting Eleanor Roosevelt’s speech to convocation in Assembly Hall at Ball State Teacher’s College (now Ball State University) in Muncie, Indiana, on May 6, 1959. The title of her speech was “Is America Facing World Leadership?” and warned against complacency and stressed the urgency of understanding other peoples in the world. These collections are also available to researchers in person in Archives and Special Collections, Ball State University Libraries.

Check out this fabulous digital display of how the Metrorail system has evolved from 1976 through today –> The Evolution of Metrorail, 1976-2010.

What a great use of technology to educate others about possible changes to our transportation system here in DC.