University of Iowa: Walt Whitman Archive Awarded NHPRC Grant!. “The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) has awarded a grant of $105,002 to the University of Iowa to support the Walt Whitman Archive’s project, ‘Fame and Infamy: Walt Whitman’s Correspondence, 1888-1892.’ The correspondence project aims to collect, transcribe, edit, and publish letters that the nineteenth-century American poet sent and received during the final years of his life.”
letters
Digital Library of Georgia: Juliette Gordon Low travel journal available online
Digital Library of Georgia: Juliette Gordon Low travel journal available online. “The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) is pleased to announce the availability of Juliette Gordon Low’s 1908 India travel correspondence… The collection, Juliette Gordon Low Correspondence, Series India Letters, belongs to Girl Scouts of the USA and is housed at the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace.”
The National Archives (UK): Prize Papers Project launches at Oldenburg Castle
The National Archives (UK): Prize Papers Project launches at Oldenburg Castle. “Imagine being the first person to open a letter written 250 years ago but which never reached its intended recipient. What might you find? What might you learn? This is the part of the daily work of the Prize Papers Project, exploring around 160,000 undelivered letters seized in their mail-bags from ships captured by the British in the wars of the 17th to the 19th centuries. Some of these letters are still unopened.”
New Online: Benjamin Franklin Papers (Library of Congress)
Library of Congress: New Online: Benjamin Franklin Papers. “The papers of Benjamin Franklin at the Library of Congress have had almost as adventurous a life as Franklin had himself. They have been abandoned and recovered, cut up by a dressmaker to make patterns and used as collateral for debt. After surviving all of that, they narrowly escaped fiery destruction on a New York pier (more on this later). Now, in a technological development that would have fascinated Franklin, the Manuscript Division is pleased to announce that the papers have been digitized and made available on the Library of Congress website.”
USC Libraries: USC Libraries Digitizing 10,200 Hamlin Garland Letters
USC Libraries: USC Libraries Digitizing 10,200 Hamlin Garland Letters. “The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) is generously supporting a project by the USC Libraries to digitize a trove of 10,200 letters between writer Hamlin Garland and important figures in late 19th and early 20th century American life. Once the project is complete, these letters will be freely accessible online via the USC Digital Library and Digital Public Library of America. Garland is best known for his short-story collection Main-Travelled Roads (1891) exploring Midwestern farm life, his autobiography A Son of the Middle Border (1917), and his biography of Civil War general and U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant. Garland played a leading role in conceptualizing American literary realism and earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for A Daughter of the Middle Border.”
WIA Report: University of Nebraska to Debut New Digital Archive of Willa Cather Letters
WIA Report: University of Nebraska to Debut New Digital Archive of Willa Cather Letters. “The University of Nebraska has announced that an archive of more than 400 letters authored by Willa Cather will soon be available in digital form. The letters will be added to the existing Willa Cather Archive that contains a wide range of information on the journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.”
Technology at the Library: Long-Hidden Text Is Uncovered in Alexander Hamilton Letter (Library of Congress)
Library of Congress: Technology at the Library: Long-Hidden Text Is Uncovered in Alexander Hamilton Letter. “When the Library of Congress recently digitized the Alexander Hamilton Papers, that letter, unedited, with its 14 obliterated lines, became visible to all for the first time. However, the lines were still unreadable. To find out what lay beneath the scratchings-out, Fenella France, chief of the Preservation Research and Testing Division, and preservation staff Meghan Wilson and Chris Bolser used hyperspectral imaging. A noninvasive analysis that employs light at different wavelengths to capture information not visible to the eye, hyperspectral imaging can determine the composition of inks and pigments, track changes in documents over time and reveal faded, erased or covered writing.”
