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The World Wide Web, in combination with scanning and digitization processes, has made possible the online publication of rare and valuable materials
previously restricted to local users and professional researchers. These materials include manuscripts, books, letters, photographs,
sheet music, and other types of primary source materials. The materials on this page are currently organized under the following
headings:
Alabama
Books Online
Geography, Geology and Maps
History and Social Sciences
Music and Performing Arts
Primary Sources-Repositories
Search Engines
 Special Collections of Note
A World of Ideas Lectures Archive
http://www.lecturesarchive.com/4466.html
This site contains academic lectures in audio and video formats.
The material originates on university websites and radio stations and covers a broad range of topics, including philosophy,
religion, the arts, languages, and social sciences.
The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org/indexhasflash.html
On December 7, 2007, the New York Times reported on an exhibit of artifacts recovered from abandoned suitcases and trunks that
were discovered in the attic of the Willard Psychiatric Center in Finger Lakes New York in 1995
(
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/arts/design/07suit.html?_r=1&ref=design&oref=slogin). A handful of the retrieved
items are on display at the New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library through January 31.
The beautifully-designed website preserves the exhibit's poignant images, and includes detailed biographical profiles of nine Willard
Patients; historical information about the institution; and discussion about social issues related to mental illness and
society's response to the mentally ill and marginalized.
State Archives Collections Online: Directory of Digital Collections, Virtual Exhibits, and State Memory Projects
http://www.statearchivists.org/arc/education/online_coll.htm
This site is produced by the Council of State Archivists and the Archives Resource Center.
Search Engines
OAIster
http://www.oaister.org
A union catalog, that is,
a catalog representing the holdings of more than one institution, of digital resources. It is located at the University of Michigan.
This resource allows for searching among 890 contributors. The list of contributors is continually growing.
Yahoo Directory of Digital
Libraries
http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/Libraries/Digital_Libraries
Repositories of Primary Sources
http://www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html
This site is maintained by
Terry Abraham, former Head of Special Collections and Archives at the University of Idaho. It lists over 5000 websites describing manuscripts,
archives, rare books, and other types of primary sources. Please note that the sites listed are not necessarily digitized,
although there are many digitized materials available. Please also note that as of November 2007, the site does contain broken links.
Alabama
Alabama Maps
http://alabamamaps.ua.edu
Alabama Maps is a project of the
Cartographic Research Laboratory at the University of Alabama. The Historical Map Archive Digitized Collection contains items from
seven different sources:
http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/about.html.
Alabama Mosaic
http://www.alabamamosaic.org/about.php
Alabama Mosaic is a digital
repository for materials related to Alabama's history and culture.
Click here for a current list of Alabama Mosaic collections.
Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections
http://www.bplonline.org/resources/Digital_Project/Collections.asp
This collection includes Alabama
Theaters, Birmingham Neighborhoods, and photographs of historic Birmingham buildings. It also contains the Rucker Agee
historical map collection with materials dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries.
Samford University Library Digital Collection
http://www.alabamamosaic.org/partners.php
Alabama Mosaic is a digital
repository for materials related to Alabama's history and culture. Note Samford's listing among the various Alabama
Mosaic partners. Click
here for a link to digital collections, including Samford's.
Books Online
Online Books Page.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
This site lists over 25,000 free books available on the web. It is a project of the University of Pennsylvania's John Mark Ockerbloom.
Google Book Search
http://books.google.com/
This site contains 10,000+ fully accessible public domain books.
Excerpts from many more copyrighted books are also available.
Project Gutenberg
http://www.archive.org/details/texts
This is the Internet's oldest producer of free electronic books. Most of its items are in the public domain.
It includes a growing collection of digitized
sheet music.
Interactives: Dynamic Earth (requires Macromedia Flash Player)
http://www.learner.org/interactives/dynamicearth
This dynamic interactive site is produced by Annenberg media.
It explores subjects such as plate tectonics and plate boundaries, as well the geological features of earthquakes and volcanoes.
In the section titled "Earth Structure," viewers can use the mouse roll-over to learn about the earth's crust, mantle, and outer core.
The area titled "Slip, Slide and Collide" describes the movement of tectonic plates that produce earth's most dramatic geological events.
Maps: Finding our Place in the World
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/maps
This site belongs to the wonderful Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. It was designed to accompany an
ongoing museum exhibit, and includes a photo gallery and interactive feature allowing visitors to view in detail maps from every part of
the globe. The exploration of maps provides a window into the "...technologies, social structures, and environments" of the
individuals and cultures that produced them. See, for example, a clay tablet map dating from 1300 B.C. representing
the first known town plan drawn to scale. It depicts Nippur, a religious center in Mesopotamia, approximately 100 miles
southeast of present-day Baghdad. Go to http://www.fieldmuseum.org/maps/gallery.asp
and click on the image in the lower left corner.
World Map Collection
http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/?c=map1
This is a joint project of the University of
Florida's Map Imagery Library and the University Libraries' Department of Special and Area Studies Collection.
The collection is particularly strong in historic and antique maps.
African American History from the University of
Florida Special Collections
http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/AAexhibit/AfricanAmerican.htm
This highlights the lives and experiences of African American
Floridians. It focuses particularly on a community organization called The Visionaries, which fostered civic, cultural
and social affairs for African American Women in Gainesville beginning in the 1930's.
American Journeys. Eyewitness
Accounts of Early American Exploration
http://www.americanjourneys.org/index.asp
This site is a project of the Wisconsin Historical Society. It specializes in eyewitness accounts of North American exploration from
the Vikings in 1000 AD to the explorers of the nineteenth century.
American Memory.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
American Memory Historical Collections
from the Library of Congress. Historical images, maps, sounds recordings, sheet music, moving images that document the American
experience. Click hereto view a complete alphabetical list of the
collection.
British History Online
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/
This site is a project of the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust. It contains primary and secondary sources
ranging from medieval to contemporary.
The Center for Jewish History
http://digital.cjh.org
The Center for Jewish History, with
headquarters at 15 W. 16th St. in New York, is comprised of
five partner institutions: the American Jewish Historical Society,
American
Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck
Institute, Yeshiva University
Museum, and YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research. The CJH digital collection contains materials from all five institutions.
The Civil Rights Digital Library
http://crdl.usg.edu
This site is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia. It contains historical materials, including news film archives, from educational
institutions across the U.S.
The Digital Library of Georgia
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/?Welcome
This site focuses on the history and culture of Georgia. Its contents include books, manuscripts,
government documents, maps, photographs, and audio and video files.
Documenting the
American South
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Digital Collections
http://docsouth.unc.edu
This site includes primary text documents, images,
and audio files related to Southern history and culture.
It provides author, title, subject and geographic location
searching options.
The Making of America
http://moa.cit.cornell.edu/moa/ -
Major serials from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moagrp -
Monographs in the areas of education, psychology, American history,
sociology, science, technology, and religion.
This
is a collaborative project of Cornell University and the University
of Michigan. MOA is a digital library of primary sources in
American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. It is
particularly strong in the areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, science and
technology.
The Mitchell & Kenyon Collection
http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/mk/
The Mitchell & Kenyon Film Company, based on Blackburn, England, pioneered early commercial films at the beginning of the 20th century.
In 1994, 800 rolls of the original nitrate film was discovered in a building undergoing demolition.
The film contains unique moving film images from Edwardian England, providing a fascinating visual record of
everyday life in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century.
While the Mitchell & Kenyon material is not fully digitized for Internet viewing, the discovery and
preservation of this material is so unique and important that it merits inclusion in this list.
NYPL Digital-The New York Public Library
http://www.nypl.org/digital/
A gateway to the New York Public Library's
rare and unique collections in digitized format.
The NYPL Digital Gallery offers over 550,000 images from primary sources. These include illuminated manuscripts,
historical maps, vintage posters, and photographs. Click
hereto view a list and descriptions of the NYPL's outstanding collections.
Open Vault: WGBH Media Library and Archives
http://openvault.wgbh.org
Boston's WGBH is known and recognized for its commitment and contribution to non-commercial, educational
programming. This site contains historically significant content produced by WGBH covering a wide range of subjects.
Its material is primarily in video format dating from the sixties, seventies and eighties. Subject areas include
Business, Education, Humanities, Massachusetts, Science and Technology, and Social Science.
Royal Historical Society Bibliography
http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibl/bibwel.asp
This site is hosted by the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. It is described as "an authoritative guide to
what has been written about British and Irish History from the Roman period to the present day." Subjects include the British empire and
commonwealth. It contains an online bibliography containing over 430,000 entries and utilizes open URL to provide full text access when available.
The Scout Report describes it as "a formidable resource that covers everything from steel production in Sheffield to the life of Disraeli."
(The Scout Report Vol. 13 No. 44 [November 16 2007]); http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/2007/scout-071116.php).
Sojourner Truth Institute and Sojourner
Truth Virtual Library
http://www.sojournertruth.org
http://www.sojournertruth.org/library
The Institute is located in Battle Creek, Michigan, which houses a monument to Sojourner Truth. The Virtual Library contains
reprints of historical articles from a variety of sources, transcriptions of speeches delivered by Sojourner Truth, and a list
of recommended readings.
University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill Digital Collections
http://www.lib.unc.edu/digitalprojects.html
This is a rich and varied resource for Southern History. UNC's digital collections include "The Manigault Plantation Journal;"
"North Carolina Postcards;" the "Gilmer Civil War Maps Collection;" "Slavery and the Making of the University;" and "Three Hundred Years
of Southern Jewish History."
YIVO - Institute for
Jewish Research
http://www.yivo.org
YIVO, the Institute for Jewish
Research (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut was founded in 1925 in Vilna (then Poland, now Lithuania)
to study and study the history, language and culture of the Jews of Eastern Europe. YIVO is now headquartered in New York
City. It is the world's premier source for manuscripts, rare books, and diaries photographs, audio recordings, films.Click here
to view a list of photo galleries. Click here to view descriptions
of all collections, including music, sound, photograph and film. Prominent among its online digital collections
is the following:
People of a Thousand Towns
http://www.yivo.org/library/index.php?tid=105&aid=260
Photographs documenting Jewish life in Eastern Europe from the late 19th century to the early 1940's.
19th Century American
Sheet Music Digitization Project - University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill
http://www.lib.unc.edu/music/eam/index.html
The publication of sheet music flourished in the U.S. between the 1830s and the 1860s. UNC Chapel Hill has digitized over 1200 out of 2250
titles in this collection of 19th century sheet music. The site allows for browsing by keyword, title, composer, and series.
The digitization project was funded by a one-time grant, and digitization of the remaining items is uncertain
( see http://www.lib.unc.edu/music/eam/links.html).
Please note that this link (http://www.lib.unc.edu/music/eam/links.html)contains
a list of other sheet music collections. As of November 30, 2007, the site at UC Berkeley was not
functioning.
The Belknap Collection for the Performing Arts
(University of Florida)
http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/?c=part1
This collection was founded by New York librarian
Sarah Yancy Belknap in 1958. The collection's material
consists primarily of non-book, primary source material.
Approximately 85% is 19th and 20th century American and European
ephemera, among which are playbills, programs, costume and
stage design, theatrical scrapbooks, posters, and scripts. The
Belknap Collection includes the Ringling Collection of
Images of 19th Century Actors and Actresses: http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/UFDC.aspx?c=part1&s=ringling.
Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (Baylor University)
http://www.baylor.edu/lib/electrres/index.php?id=44987
color=#003366>This is an ongoing project that seeks to acquire, preserve and catalog rare and seldom-heard 78s, 45s and LPs dating
from 1945-1970. The project's eventual goal is the creation of a digital audio archive. The site currently offers limited streaming material.
Click on "browse a portion of the collection," then click on a vinyl disc thumbnail. Choose side one or side two, and then click on "access this item"
from the top center of the page. The project's director, Robert Darden, was interviewed on the NPR program Fresh Air on December 20, 2007.
Click hereto listen to this interview and to learn more about how materials
for this unique and important collection are being acquired.
Classic Performances of Classical Music on YouTube
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18881714
YouTube contains obscure and hard-to-find clips and newsreels of performances by Heifetz, Toscanini, and Rubenstein among many others.
NPR ran a story on the YouTube collection, which also contains links to some of the most notable performances.
Digital Scores Collection from the Loeb Music Library at Harvard University
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/loebmusic/collections/digital.html
This collection contains scanned images of rare
musical scores. Works by Bach, Mozart and Verdi are currently available. These documents are special treat. Note, for
example, the first entry, one of the first catalogs of Bach's works compiled in 1860 by Franz Hauer. The library acquired it in
2002; prior to that date, it had not been seen for 100 years.
Julliard Manuscript
Collection
http://www.juilliardmanuscriptcollection.org/
This collection contains 138
autograph manuscripts, sketches, engravers' proofs, and first editions. These materials were donated to Julliard in 2006 by
Board Chairman Bruce Kovner. Hit "click to enter" and browse the list of composers whose works are
represented.
Music, Theater and Dance: A Performing Arts Digital Library (Library of Congress)
http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/ihas
This diverse collection includes African-American Band Music and Recordings, and streaming content
from the series "Great Conversations in Music" hosted by Eugene Istomin. Note that this collection overlaps with elements in
the "American Memory" collection at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html,
which also contains Performing Arts and Music Collections.
Online Resources for Music Scholars: A List from Harvard College Library
http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/music/resources/digital.html
The first section titled "Digital Music Collections" is restricted to Harvard users; skip down to "Sheet Music and Multimedia Resources." This listing includes
a collection of Chopin early editions at the University of Chicago; and streaming audio from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization
Project at UC Santa Barbara.
Project Gutenberg Digitized Sheet Music
http://www.gutenberg.org/music
Recording
History Technology
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/notes.html
This site contains a detailed, illustrated
timeline of the development of recording technology. On a related note, see Tinfoil.com, http://www.tinfoil.com, which preserves and
makes available through audio streaming early wax cylinder recordings.
21st Century Music
http://www.21st-centurymusic.com/
This journal is
edited by Mark Alburger and contains concert reviews, recording
reviews, and interviews.
West Side Story: Birth of a Classic
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/westsidestory/
This site is based on a Library of Congress Exhibit, and provides viewers with a treasure trove information about the show's background and development. The site is
divided into sections that include "Birth of a Musical" and "The Legacy of West Side Story," and contains rehearasal photographs, opening night telegrams, and coreographic notes.
Open Science Directory
http://www.opensciencedirectory.net
The Open Science Directory provides access to a wide range of journals to researchers in
developed and developing countries. With the support of EBSCO Information Services and Hasselt University Library,
the Open Science Directory provides access to approximately 13000 scientific journals. The Directory includes collections of
open access journals and also draws on a variety of other resources, including BioMed Central and PubMed Central.
By clicking on the "Open Science Directory" tab, users are redirected to the site's search engine. Users can then can browse the list
of titles alphabetically or topically, and also create customzed searched across a number of fields.
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