Digital Scholarship

Top-Ten Articles Published in The Readex Report

Posted on Tue, 6/21/2011 - 9:22
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The Readex Report is a quarterly e-newsletter that explores diverse aspects of both modern librarianship and digital historical collections. Through original articles by academic faculty and librarians, The Readex Report provides insights on topics as wide-ranging as those found in the following list of the most clicked-upon articles published since 2006. Preserving the Library in the Digital Age

By Benjamin L. Carp, Assistant Professor of History, Tufts University [Volume 4, Issue 4]

Heart or Muscle? The Library in the Digital Age

By Edward Shephard, State University of New York, Binghamton [Volume 4, Issue 3]

“Meet the Students”: Bringing Your Library’s Online Resources Into Your Students’ “Circle of Trust”

By Lynn D. Lampert, Chair, Reference & Instructional Services, California State University, Northridge [Volume 2, Issue 2]

Top-Ten Articles Published in The Readex Report

Just Browsing: Cool Items from the Past

Posted on Tue, 6/14/2011 - 10:50
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One of the joys of browsing American historical newspapers is discovering the unexpected from around the world. Take this photograph, for example, of a car being dragged across a Siberian river during the Peking-to-Paris race in 1907:

Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer; Date: Aug. 18, 1907; Page: 29

Or this photo of European ostrich racing in the 1920s:

Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer, Date: Sept. 28, 1924; Page 76

Just Browsing: Cool Items from the Past

"A Dastardly Outrage": Kate Brown and the Washington-Alexandria Railroad Case

Posted on Wed, 6/08/2011 - 3:31
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[Kate Brown, a U.S. Senate laundress promoted to retiring room attendant, is most notable for winning the 1873 Supreme Court Case Railroad Company v. Brown. This spring Brown was the focus of a winning entry in a research competition sponsored by the Oxford African American Studies Center and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. That winning entry on Brown, which will be published in the online African American National Biography, was researched and written by McLean (VA) High School students Brian Tong and Theodore Lin, who utilized the U.S. Congressional Serial Set among other sources. The article on Kate Brown below was written by Betty K. Koed, Assistant Historian in the U.S. Senate Historical Office. It appeared in the September 2008 issue of The Readex Report, where it was published with permission from Unum, a newsletter published by the Office of the Secretary of the United States Senate.]
"A Dastardly Outrage": Kate Brown and the Washington-Alexandria Railroad Case

You are what you eat? Maybe, maybe not

Posted on Fri, 6/03/2011 - 2:53
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Source: Morning Oregonian, Feb. 5, 1910

Low-fat? Low-calorie? Low-carb? Headlines seem to grab the public’s interest every day with warnings about what and what not to eat. With food-related health issues and rising obesity rates getting so much attention in the United States and around the world, it is tempting to think that mankind’s struggles with diet are new. But of course they aren’t!

Source: Rising Sun (Kansas City, MO), May 26, 1905. Click to open in PDF.

You are what you eat? Maybe, maybe not

Commodore Vanderbilt: Patriot or War Profiteer?

Posted on Fri, 4/08/2011 - 3:52
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Post by T.J. Stiles, author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Knopf)

[Note: On April 7, 2011, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as part of its 87th annual competition, awarded a Fellowship to T.J. Stiles based on impressive prior achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. This article by T.J. Stiles appeared in the February 2010 issue of The Readex Report. Here he discusses his use of the Readex digital edition of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set in researching The First Tycoon, which won both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.]
Commodore Vanderbilt: Patriot or War Profiteer?

Law and Disorder: Urbana University Students Bring an 1857 Court Case to Life

Posted on Thu, 4/07/2011 - 3:29
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Our guest blogger today is Julie Ann McDaniel, Librarian, Swedenborg Memorial Library,Urbana University 

Source: The Historical Marker DataBase

Mechanicsburg, Ohio is a really small place today—less than 2,000 people—so imagine what the population would have been in 1857. But this little community was the site of an event that lead to a federal court case to determine the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act.

 

Many local students knew vaguely of the story of Addison White, a runaway slave from Kentucky. His master tracked him to Mechanicsburg and sent slave catchers to bring him back. No one expected the townspeople of Mechanicsburg to arrive with pitchforks and carpet beaters to chase the slave catchers away.

Law and Disorder: Urbana University Students Bring an 1857 Court Case to Life

Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire on its 100th Anniversary

Posted on Mon, 3/28/2011 - 10:52
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Photo credit: Courtsey of Kheel Center

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was a business that made shirtwaists, the common term of the day for women's blouses. The business, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building in New York City. Most of its employees were young women, mainly Italian and European Jewish immigrants. While the building was relatively modern and clean, the pay was low, the days were long, and working conditions were often dangerous. These factors combined to make the factory a classic example of a "sweatshop."  

Source: NYC 100 Years Ago

Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire on its 100th Anniversary

Valentine's Day in 19th-Century American Newspapers

Posted on Mon, 2/07/2011 - 3:01
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Farmers' Register (14 May 1805)

An early mention of Valentine’s Day in an American newspaper comes from the Farmers' Register (Lansingburgh, NY). This article, reprinted from an unnamed British paper, notes the increase in Valentine’s Day letters passing through the London post office from 60,000 in 1804 to 80,000 in 1805. Clearly, the practice of sending notes to a lover was growing noticeably. 

Connecticut Herald (14 May 1811)

In May 1811, the Connecticut Herald (Hartford, CT) quoted a London paper reporting “the love stricken of both sexes thought fit to send to the respective objects of their passion…” not “less than 300,000 of these inflammatory packets…through the post office, within forty-eight hours.” Jumping ahead to February 1844, the Boston Evening Transcript printed a document from the New York Post Office indicating “that the Postmaster of Great Gotham does not intend to be beaten in his arrangements for distributing the missives suggested by the anniversary of St. Valentine, whatever may have been his ill fortune with the foreign mails.”

 

Valentine's Day in 19th-Century American Newspapers

Flashbacks: Filling in the Blanks (with the Seattle Times historical archive)

Posted on Thu, 1/20/2011 - 2:07
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Maybe you missed it, or perhaps you weren’t yet born. But imagine for just a moment that you’d made the trip from Seattle, Washington, to Max Yasgur’s Bethel, New York, farm in the late summer of 1969. You were one of the half-million people attending the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. One of your traveling companions embarked on the trip to protest the war in Vietnam. Another tagged along for the three-day party. You however came for the music. And moreover, you’d endured three hungry days of rain, long Porta-John lines, and National Guard rations for this singular moment. The opening riff to Jimi Hendrix’s “Message to Love” brings you out of your tent, and onto your feet. He’s your hometown hero. His white Fender Stratocaster, manufactured for a right-handed player, is strung upside-down for his deft left-handed manipulation. He’s working the fret-board furiously with long, spindly fingers. And just then, you flash back.
Flashbacks: Filling in the Blanks (with the Seattle Times historical archive)

Beyond the Lunatic Fringe

Posted on Fri, 1/14/2011 - 4:17
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In his highly regarded 2006 Yale Book of Quotations, Yale law librarian Fred Shapiro gives on page 649 the following source for the phrase “lunatic fringe”:
The lunatic fringe was fully in evidence, especially in the rooms devoted to the Cubists and Futurists, or Near-Impressionists. (Outlook, 29 Mar. 1913) This, along with a usage in Roosevelt’s Autobiography (1913), represents the earliest known use of the phrase lunatic fringe.
Shapiro therein follows the entries for “lunatic fringe” found in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 17th edition (2002), the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations, 2nd edition (2002), and the Dictionary of Quotations by Bergen Evans (1968), and perhaps other of the numerous quotation dictionaries.

(Source: University of Vermont)

Beyond the Lunatic Fringe

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