Library of Congress/Ameritech awards

[Terry Kuny]

     Ten libraries from across the United States have been given awards
totaling $600,000 through a partnership between the Library of Congress
and Ameritech to digitize historically significant American collections
and make them available for the first time via the Internet from the
Library's American Memory site.

The 10 winners are:

*     Brown University, Providence, R.I., for African-American Sheet
Music. Award amount: $72,193.  This collection consists of 1,500 pieces
of African-American sheet music from 1870 to 1920, providing a window
into the daily concerns and pastimes of African Americans in the 19th
and early 20th centuries.

*     Denver Public Library, Denver, for History of the American West,
1860-1920.  Award amount: $71,250. This collection includes 7,500 photos
documenting the lives of the Plains, Mountain and Southwestern tribes of
Native Americans and the mining booms in Colorado, plus access to 48,000
previously digitized images in the Denver Western History Collection.

*     Duke University, Durham, N.C., for Historic American Sheet Music.
Award amount: $64,688. This collection consists of 3,000 pieces of
historic American sheet music from the period 1850-1920, representing a
wide variety of musical types including bel canto; minstrel songs;
protest, political and patriotic songs; plantation songs; spirituals;
songs from vaudeville, musicals, and Tin Pan Alley; World War I
compositions; and Civil War battle songs.

*     Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., for American Landscape and
Architectural Design, 1850-1920.  Award amount: $33,214.  This
collection consists of 2,500 lantern slide images assembled to support
teaching and student presentations in the field of architecture,
landscape architecture and urban planning.

*     New York Public Library, New York City, for Small Town America:
Stereoscopic Views from the Dennis Collection, 1850-1910.  Award amount:
$74,956.  This collection includes 11,552 stereoscopic views representing
the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

*     North Dakota State University, Fargo, for The Northern Great
Plains, 1880-1920.  Award amount: $15,628.  These collections include
more than 900 images documenting the settlement and agricultural
development of the Northern Great Plains.

*     Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, for The African-American
Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920. Award amount: $72,844.  This digital
collection of 22,000 pages of text and images focuses on themes such as
slavery and emancipation, religion, public opinion and political
action.

*     University of Chicago, Chicago, for American Environmental
Photographs, 1897-1931.  Award amount: $67,418.  This collection of
5,800 photographic images documents natural environments, ecologies, and
plant communities in their original state throughout the United States.

*     University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, for First-Person
Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920.  Award amount: $74,782.
This compilation of 100 printed texts documents the culture of the 19th
century American South from the viewpoint of Southerners and includes
diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts and ex-slave
narratives.

*     University of Texas, Austin, for The South Texas Border, 1900-
1920.  Award amount: $46,945. This collection consists of 8,241
photographs of northeastern Mexico and the South Texas border area,
including images of the diverse ethnic groups living in the area,
military preparation for the Mexican Revolution and World War I, and the
natural and built environment.

     Additional information on the Library of Congress/Ameritech
National Digital Library Competition is available at:
     The Library's Web site -- http://www.loc.gov/
     The Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library
Competition Web site -- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award/
     The Ameritech Web site -- http://www.ameritech.com