Jackson Free Press: MSU Digitizes Endangered Citizens Council Radio Tapes. “On those tapes, the state’s old leaders often revel in their opposition to civil rights and support for segregation, revealing much about Mississippi’s political culture in the tumultuous years of the 1950s and 1960s. In one recording, [John Bell] Williams, who was then a Democratic congressman, calls the Civil Rights Act ‘the most monstrous piece of tyrannical legislation ever considered by Congress.’ In another, [Ross] Barnett, who was no longer governor at the time, claims communists are behind the civil rights movement. Digital recordings of those tapes, MSU libraries announced Thursday, are now available online.”
1950s
Boston Public Library’s 78rpm Records Come to the Internet: Reformatting the Boston Public Library Sound Archives (Internet Archive)
Internet Archive: Boston Public Library’s 78rpm Records Come to the Internet: Reformatting the Boston Public Library Sound Archives. “Following eighteen months of work, more than 50,000 78rpm record ‘sides’ from the Boston Public Library’s sound archives have now been digitized and made freely available online by the Internet Archive.” I listened to a Cab Calloway song from 1946 (“Hey Now, Hey Now” if you care) and while it did have pops and crackles I was surprised at how good the sound quality was.
Stanford Libraries: Historic Standard Hour Radio Broadcasts Now Accessible in Searchworks
Stanford Libraries: Historic Standard Hour Radio Broadcasts Now Accessible in Searchworks. “The Archive of Recorded Sound, in collaboration with the Stanford Media Preservation Lab, recently completed the digitization and cataloging of 684 analog recordings of The Standard Hour radio broadcasts that occurred between 1938 and 1955.”
Britain from the air: 1945-2009 (University of Cambridge)
University of Cambridge: Britain from the air: 1945-2009. “Aerial photographs of Britain from the 1940s to 2009 – dubbed the ‘historical Google Earth’ by Cambridge academics – have been made freely available to everyone on Cambridge University Library’s ground-breaking Digital Library.”
DigitalNC: Greensboro High School Student Magazines and Yearbooks Now Available on DigitalNC
Digital NC: Greensboro High School Student Magazines and Yearbooks Now Available on DigitalNC. “A new batch of over two dozen yearbooks from Greensboro High School has been digitized and made available on DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Greensboro History Museum. Dating from 1910 to 1958, this collection includes annual yearbooks, a 1906 copy of the Greensboro High School Magazine, and several issues of Homespun, Greensboro High School’s literary magazine dating back to the 1920s and 1930s.”
Curbed New York: The unsung modernist treasures of Queens
New-to-me, from Curbed New York: The unsung modernist treasures of Queens. “In Bayside, Queens, the American Martyrs Roman-Catholic church sits proudly on a street corner, standing in high relief compared to the single-family homes nearby. It’s circular and covered in yellow bricks, with a folded-plate copper roof that’s aged into a mossy shade of green…. It’s a fine building designed by John O’Malley, one of the most prolific ecclesiastical architects in Brooklyn and Queens. You won’t find the church in most history books about modern architecture, but it is included in Queens Modern, a digital archive composed of adaptations of the movement in New York City’s largest borough, which was updated at the end of December to include deeper dives into over a dozen firms active during the mid-20th-century.” There appears to be some concern in the comments that not everything included is “real” modernist. I don’t know enough about architecture to judge.
Times Colonist: History available at your fingertips in online archive
Times Colonist: History available at your fingertips in online archive. “Back issues of the Colonist are more accessible than ever before, thanks to a digitization project led by the University of Victoria. Back issues from 1858 to 1970 are online… and the 1970s will be added early in 2019. As John Lutz, a history professor at the University of Victoria, has said, the website is a game-changer in historical research in B.C.”
