Atlas Obscura: A Rare Day-by-Day Document of Life Aboard a Slave Ship. “THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE DATABASE documents more than 36,000 voyages in which enslaved persons were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean…. Despite the overwhelming density of these kinds of records, masking brutality with meticulous documentation, far less survives to describe daily life on these ships, or the experience of being on board. That’s what distinguishes the ‘Journal of the Slave Ship Mary,’ recently acquired by Georgetown University Library in Washington, D.C.”
primary sources
A Hudson River School Legacy: The Weir Family Papers Now Fully Digitized (Smithsonian Magazine)
Smithsonian Magazine: A Hudson River School Legacy: The Weir Family Papers Now Fully Digitized. “‘It was a great pleasure for us to have your entire family under our roof. I delighted to talk of old times and of old fellows-comparing the Past and the Present and weighing in the scales of experience. New schools, old schools and No schools.’ These words were penned by Frederic Edwin Church in a letter to John Ferguson Weir on October 12, 1888. Written from Olana, Church’s beloved home and arguably his masterpiece on the Hudson River, the letter forms part of the Weir family papers (1809–circa 1861) which are now fully digitized and available on the Archives of American Art’s website. The collection, although small at 0.8 linear feet, houses a surprising number of detailed and enlightening letters from a host of prominent artists and scholars of the nineteenth century.”
UConn Today: Archival Documents, Like Magic, Thanks to UConn Researchers’ New App
UConn Today: Archival Documents, Like Magic, Thanks to UConn Researchers’ New App. “…Sourcery gives researchers convenient, remote access to special collections that can’t otherwise be found online. Users just plug in citation information for the desired source material into the app, which can connect researchers to any institution in Sourcery’s service area. A researcher or graduate student in the local area is paid a fee to make a digital version following relevant copyrights, regulations, or policies, and within a matter of hours or days, the documents appear in the user’s inbox. No planes, no trains, no favors. Sourcery first launched in New York City, Boston, and Storrs. Now they are expanding coverage to include New Haven, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., where many of the world’s most in-demand special collections are located.”
National Archives: National Archives Launches Presidential Library Explorer
National Archives: National Archives Launches Presidential Library Explorer . “Researchers now have a new pathway into millions of digitized records across the National Archives’ 14 Presidential Libraries. The Presidential Library Explorer, launched this month, provides a more efficient way for visitors to search through records in the libraries’ holdings.”
CBC: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables manuscript going online
CBC: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables manuscript going online. “Starting in 2022, people will be able to read Anne of Green Gables online thanks to a new digital version of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s original manuscript. The hand-written manuscript will be the centrepiece of a digital exhibition involving the Confederation Centre Art Gallery (CCAG) and the University of Prince Edward Island’s L.M. Montgomery Institute and the Robertson Library.”
New Online: Digital Edition of the William Howard Taft Papers (HistoryHUB)
HistoryHUB: New Online: Digital Edition of the William Howard Taft Papers. “The papers of William Howard Taft (1857-1930), twenty-seventh president of the United States and tenth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, consist of approximately 676,000 documents (785,977 images), which have been digitized from 658 reels of previously reproduced microfilm. Held in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, these papers constitute the largest collection of original Taft documents in the world. The collection contains family papers, personal and official correspondence, presidential and judicial files, speeches and addresses, legal files and notebooks, business and estate papers, engagement calendars, guest lists, scrapbooks, clippings, printed matter, memorabilia, and photographs dating from 1784 to 1973, with the bulk of the material dated 1880-1930.”
PR Newswire: Makeup Museum Unveils Digital Preservation Of Kevyn Aucoin’s Historic Journals (PRESS RELEASE)
PR Newswire: Makeup Museum Unveils Digital Preservation Of Kevyn Aucoin’s Historic Journals (PRESS RELEASE). ” Makeup Museum today unveils images from a new digital archive of journals kept from 1983 to 1994 by legendary makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin. Aucoin worked extensively with iconic photographers such as Steven Meisel, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Peter Lindbergh, Herb Ritts, and Francesco Scavullo, models Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Paulina Porizkova, and celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Tina Turner, Liza Minnelli, and many others. Aucoin’s journals chronicle his life and work, complete with behind-the-scenes images from photoshoots for VOGUE magazine and brands such as Shiseido, Chanel, and Revlon.”
Australia Department of Defence: Digitisation of historic Air Force documents
Australia Department of Defence: Digitisation of historic Air Force documents. “The Australian public will soon be able to access a trove of significant Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) documents, many of which have been locked away for one hundred years. The public will gain online access to approximately 191 bound volumes of documents – including the signatures of first Chiefs of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams and Air Marshal Stanley Goble. Air Board and Air Council Agendas and Submissions, along with Chief of Air Staff Advisory Committee (CASAC/CAFAC) Submissions, are set to be digitised through a $300,000 project delivered with the National Archives of Australia (NAA).”
Neos Kosmos: Greek survivors voice painful memories of the German occupation
Neos Kosmos: Greek survivors voice painful memories of the German occupation. “When contemporary witnesses speak of their experiences during the WW2 German invasion and occupation of Greece between 1941 and 1944, history comes alive. Before an online video archive of their voices could be made by historians of both countries a lot of persuasion work was needed because the resource was co-funded by the German government.”
‘ISIS Files’ launch: Thousands of documents reveal the terror group’s inner workings (Task & Purpose)
Task & Purpose: ‘ISIS Files’ launch: Thousands of documents reveal the terror group’s inner workings. “The New York Times and GWU announced a partnership in 2018 to digitize, translate, and analyze more than 15,000 pages of internal ISIS documents. Now, those documents are beginning to appear on the ISIS files website, which is based around themes such as ideology, war spoils, agriculture programs, and religious police files.”
J-Wire: Australia’s oldest operating synagogue approaching its 175th anniversary
J-Wire: Australia’s oldest operating synagogue approaching its 175th anniversary. “Hobart Hebrew Congregation has run services in the heritage-listed synagogue in central Hobart since its consecration on July 4, 1845, and was set to mark the milestone with an array of projects and a program of public celebrations. The coronavirus forced the celebration to be cancelled, but the projects have been successfully completed. The highlight of the anniversary year has been making the congregation’s meeting minutes from 1841 to 1958 easily accessible online.”
John Stevens Cooper Family Papers, PC.2190: Featuring a Soldier’s Letters to Wife Left in Charge of the Farm, Family, and Slaves, 1863–1865 (State Archives of North Carolina)
State Archives of North Carolina: John Stevens Cooper Family Papers, PC.2190: Featuring a Soldier’s Letters to Wife Left in Charge of the Farm, Family, and Slaves, 1863–1865. “The John Stevens Cooper Family Papers (PC.2190) are remarkable for the series of letters from John to his wife, Elizabeth, while he served in the Confederate military in 1863 and 1864. This correspondence sheds light on John’s recognition of the fact that, in his absence, Elizabeth knew what was best for managing their farm and slaves. His letters further illuminate his homesickness, his lack of faith in the Southern cause, and, in two notable instances, his desolation upon encountering the enemy.”
Columbia Missourian: SHSMO concludes digitalizing World War II letter collection
Columbia Missourian: SHSMO concludes digitalizing World War II letter collection. “Staffers and volunteers at the State Historical Society of Missouri finished the almost four-year process this month, according to a SHSMO press release. The selection contains texts written by more than 3,000 people, men and women, from every state of the country. They were transcribed and scanned to the SHSMO website with the goal of making the work of researchers, scholars and visitors easier.”
Rome: Keats-Shelley House launches digital archive (Wanted in Rome)
Wanted in Rome: Rome: Keats-Shelley House launches digital archive. “The Keats-Shelley House Museum and Library in Rome has launched its new digital collections of manuscripts and art celebrating the lives and works of the Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The launch of the museum’s new website and online collection coincides with the start of Keats-Shelley 200, a three-year programme of events, exhibitions and activities in the UK and Italy in celebration of the poets’ extraordinary works.”
The Text Message (National Archives): Over 650 Newly Digitized Navy Logbooks in the National Archives Catalog
The Text Message (National Archives): Over 650 Newly Digitized Navy Logbooks in the National Archives Catalog. “These firsthand accounts of the Battle of New Orleans during the Civil War are just small snippets from two Navy logbooks, which are part of 653 digitized logbooks from 30 Navy vessels that recently became available in the National Archives Catalog (see list below). These logbooks were digitized in the Innovation Hub at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC, by a team of five graduate student interns working on a project titled ‘Seas of Knowledge: Digitization and Retrospective Analysis of the Historical Logbooks of the United States Navy.’ This project will continue through 2021 and will focus on digitizing Navy logbooks for the period 1861-1879, after having made 548 volumes of associated muster rolls available in the NARA catalog last year.”
