New Ameritech Collections in American Memory

[danna c. bell-russel]

Good afternoon,

This announcement is being sent to a number of lists. Please accept our 
apologies for duplicate postings.

With a gift from Ameritech in 1996, the Library of Congress sponsored a 
three-year competition ending in 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 complement and enhance the 
collections of the National Digital Library Program at the Library of 
Congress.  They will be part of a distributed collection of converted 
library materials and digital originals to which many American institutions 
will contribute. The most recent additions to the American Memory 
collections are The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820, 
Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869, and 
Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884-1934.

The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820 is drawn from the 
holdings of the University of Chicago Library and the Filson Historical 
Society of Louisville, Kentucky.  Among the sources included are books, 
periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, scientific publications, broadsides, 
letters, journals, legal documents, ledgers and other financial records, 
maps, physical artifacts, and pictorial images.  It incorporates roughly 
15,000 pages.  The collection documents the travels of the first Europeans 
to enter the trans-Appalachian West, the maps tracing their explorations, 
their relations with Native Americans, and their theories about the 
region's mounds and other ancient earthworks. Naturalists and other 
scientists describe Western bird life and bones of prehistoric 
animals.  Books and letters document the new settlers' migration and 
acquisition of land, navigation down the Ohio River, planting of crops, and 
trade in tobacco, horses, and whiskey. Leaders from Thomas Jefferson and 
James Madison to Isaac Shelby, William Henry Harrison, Aaron Burr, and 
James Wilkinson comment on politics and regional conspiracies.  Documents 
also reveal the lives of trans-Appalachian African Americans, nearly all of 
them slaves; the position of women; and the roles of churches, schools, and 
other institutions. This collection can be found at 
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/icuhtml/ >.

Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869 incorporates 
49 diaries, in 59 volumes, of pioneers trekking westward across America to 
Utah, Montana, and the Pacific between 1847 and the meeting of the rails in 
1869. The diarists and their stories are the central focus and the 
important voices in this collection, which also includes 43 maps, 82 
photographs and illustrations, and 7 published guides for 
immigrants.  Forty-five men and four women wrote of their experiences while 
traveling along the Mormon, California, Montana or Oregon trails. 
Twenty-three writers (21 men and 2 women) were travelers along the Mormon 
Trail, while 19 men and one woman were chroniclers of the California Trail. 
Three men wrote about their travels to Oregon. John C. Anderson traveled 
with his brother-in-law and a cook by "ambulance" to Montana and returned 
by boat to the east, while Kate Dunlap traveled with her husband and 
children to settle permanently in Bannock City, Montana. Benjamin Ross 
Cauthorn, along with his parents and brothers, thought their destination 
was the 1860s gold rush territory of Montana, only to discover, upon 
reaching Montana, that it was late in the gold game and so they pushed on 
to Oregon.  Stories of persistence and pain, birth and death, God and gold, 
trail dust and debris, learning, love, and laughter, and even trail tedium 
can be found in these original "on the trail" accounts. The collection 
tells the stories of Mormon pioneer families and others who were part of 
the national westering movement, sharing trail experiences common to 
hundreds of thousands of westward migrants.

The source materials for this collection are housed at Brigham Young 
University, the University of Utah, Utah State University, the Church 
Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Utah State 
Historical Society, the University of Nevada, Reno, the Churchill County 
Museum in Fallon, Nevada, and Idaho State University. This collection can 
be found online at <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/upbhtml/>

Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884-1934 
includes a rich diversity of unique or rare materials: personal 
correspondence, essays, typescripts, reports and memos; photographs, maps 
and postcards; and publications from individuals and the government.  Major 
topics and issues illustrated include the establishment of the Everglades 
National Park; the growth of the modern conservation movement and its 
institutions, including the National Audubon Society; the evolving role of 
women on the political stage; the treatment of Native Americans; rights of 
individual citizens or private corporations vs. the public interest; and 
accountability of government as trustees of public resources, whether for 
the purposes of development, reclamation, or environmental protection. The 
materials in this online compilation are drawn from sixteen physical 
collections housed in the archives and special collections of the 
University of Miami, Florida International University and the Historical 
Museum of Southern Florida.  These collections are normally available only 
by appointment at the holding library in Miami.  "Reclaiming the 
Everglades" now makes these valuable materials freely accessible to users 
worldwide.  This collection can be found online at 
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/fmuhtml/>.

Additional information on the LC/Ameritech competition can be found at 
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award/>. Please direct any questions to 
<http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-memory.html>.