Announcment of New Ameritech Collections On American Memory

[Danna Bell-Russel]

Announcement of New Ameritech Collections Available Online as Part of
American Memory

With a gift from Ameritech the Library of Congress has sponsored a
competition from 1996 to 1999 to enable public, research, and academic
libraries, museums, historical societies, and archival institutions
(except federal institutions) to create digital collections of primary
resources.  These digital collections will complement and enhance the
collections of the National Digital Library Program at the Library of
Congress.

It is with pleasure that the Library announces the latest collections to
be released as a part of the LC/Ameritech National Digital Library
Competition:

“American Environmental Photographs,1891-1936: Images from the
University of Chicago Library” which can be found at the following URL:
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/icuhtml/>

and

“African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920: Selected from the Collections
of Brown University” which can be found at the following URL:  <
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/rpbhtml/>

The American Environmental Photographs collection consists of 4500
photographs documenting natural environments, ecologies, and plant
communities in their original state throughout the United States at the
end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.
Produced between 1897 and 1931 by a group of American botanists
generally regarded as one of the most influential in the development of
modern ecological studies, these photographs provide an overview of
important representative natural landscapes in their original, or nearly
original, condition throughout the United States. They demonstrate the
character of a wide range of American topography, its forestation,
aridity,  shifting coastal dune complexes, and watercourses.  Comparison
of these early photographs with later views highlight the changes over
the decades resulting from natural alterations of the landscape,
disturbances from construction, mining, and industrialization, and
effective natural resource usage. Henry Chandler Cowles (1869-1939) and
other University of Chicago ecologists took the photographs on field
trips across the North American continent.

For additional information about this project please visit the page
announcing the University of Chicago's award which can be found at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award/97award/chicago.html>

The African American Sheet Music collection consists of 1,305 pieces of
African-American sheet music dating from 1850-1920. The collection
includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy
in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period.
Numerous titles are associated with the novel and the play Uncle Tom's
Cabin. Civil War period music includes songs about African-American
soldiers and the plight of the newly emancipated slave. Post-Civil War
music reflects the problems of Reconstruction and the beginnings of
urbanization and the northern migration of African Americans.
African-American popular composers include James Bland, Ernest Hogan,
Bob Cole, James Reese Europe, and Will Marion Cook. Twentieth century
titles feature many photographs of African-American musical performers,
often in costume.  Unlike many other sorts of published works, sheet
music can be produced rapidly in response to an event or public
interest, and thus is a source of relatively unmediated and unrevised
perspectives on quickly changing events and public attitudes.
Particularly significant in this collection are the visual depictions of
African Americans, which provide much information about racial attitudes
over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

For additional information about this project please visit the page
announcing the Brown University’s award which can be found at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award/97award/brown.html>

For information about the LC/Ameritech competition please visit the
competition home page which can be found at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award/index.html>

Please send any questions about these collections to NDLPCOLL at loc.edu.