Category Archives: Cool items

Name: Book Talk: Big Fiction
Start: 2024-05-09T10:00:00-08:00
End: 2024-05-09T11:00:00-08:00
Location: VIRTUAL

Aruba Launches Digital Heritage Portal, Preserving Its History and Culture for Global Access

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Caralee Adams

Many know Aruba as a popular tourist destination with beautiful beaches. The small island nation just north of Venezuela is also home to 110,000 inhabitants with a rich history—that many are working to preserve.

Aruba’s memory institutions have been digitizing materials for years. Initially, residents and international scholars could only view the items at the library on the island. But now with the help of Internet Archive, the Aruba Collection (Coleccion Aruba) is available to anyone for free from anywhere.

EXPLORE THE COLECCION ARUBA

A celebration of the heritage portal’s launch is being held via livestream on April 8.

COLLABORATION IS KEY

Digitizing the island’s historic materials was a collaborative effort. After Aruba became a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1986, the national library (Biblioteca Nacional Aruba; Aruba National Library – BNA) and the national archives (Archivo Nacional Aruba; National Archives of Aruba – ANA) were established. Leaders from the two institutions worked together to curate and scan artifacts including newspapers, government reports, and cultural items.

“Aruba has a challenging past due to migration, colonization, and slavery,” said Peter Scholing, information specialist/researcher at BNA, the national library. “That means there has been a diaspora of people coming in and spreading out throughout the world—the same goes for our collection and documents.”

Locating materials to digitize involved several local institutions on the island. Because the materials are scattered, Aruba has branched out to collaborate with others in the Caribbean, Venezuela, Netherlands and the United States. The local leaders established protocols and standards for the collection, but didn’t have enough resources to make the materials available in a robust digital library.

Kaart van het Eiland Aruba (1825) / Map of the Island of Aruba (1825)

Connecting with the Internet Archive to host the digital collection provided the missing piece of the puzzle, according to leaders in Aruba. “Because of the reality of our small island state, we don’t have much funding for big company servers,” said Raymond Hernandez, head of the Aruba National Archives (ANA). “If you have a limited budget, it’s not possible. The dream has come true, thanks to the Internet Archive. We are very grateful.”

The new portal on the Internet Archive devoted to Aruba includes links to the several other institutions such as UNOCA (Union di Organisacionnan Cultural Arubano (UNOCA), Museo Arkeologico Nacional Aruba (MANA); National Archaeological Museum Aruba; Stichting Monumentenfonds Aruba (SMFA); Monuments Fund of Aruba), Departamento di Cultura Aruba, University of Aruba, TeleAruba and UNESCO Aruba.

EXPLORE THE COLECCION ARUBA

The collection has more than 100,000 items to date — nearly a one-to-one ratio for the island’s population. This includes about 40,000 documents, 60,000 images, 900 videos, 45 audio files and seven 3D objects for a total of 67 thematic and/or institutional (sub)collections.

As an additional layer of protection, the materials are being uploaded to the Filecoin decentralized storage network, thanks to a longstanding relationship between the Internet Archive and Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW).

[See paper on the Aruba Model – Coleccion Aruba: Intersectoral Collaboration on Aruba as a Model for the (Dutch) Caribbean : A collaborative approach for preservation and access of collections in small island states]

RESEARCH USE OF THE COLLECTION

Chelsea Schields, University of California, Irvine

For Chelsea Schields, associate professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, the materials were so compelling and easy to use that she integrated them into her undergraduate course, “Oil and Capitalism.” Students learn about the global history of petroleum and develop research skills to build an argument based on evidence. “Students use the Aruba Collection to write research papers related to the culture of oil towns,” Schields said. “It is often their favorite part of the course because they get to dig into the sources themselves and identify the themes that resonate across those materials.”

Unlike other primary source collections, which are often cumbersome and hidden behind a costly paywall, the diverse sources found enabled students to write papers on topics ranging from migrant domestic workers in Aruba to the spatial organization of oil towns.

In her own research for a book on the social histories of oil refineries on Aruba and Curaçao, Schields said the Aruba heritage portal was extremely useful when the COVID-19 pandemic restricted travel in the summer of 2020. “The Aruba Collection provided such an indispensable, bottom-up portrait of the history of the island’s Lago Refinery, which at its peak was among the largest plants in the world,” she said. “From photographs of refinery workers and their families to digitized copies of employee publications, these sources allowed me to see the labor required to transform oil into the commodities we rely upon today.”

Adi Martis, Utrecht University (emeritus)

Since the launch of Coleccion Aruba, Adi Martis said he uses the website almost every day. The emeritus associate professor at Utrecht University in The Netherlands appreciates how easy it is to access a variety of materials in national archives and the national library collections. For example, by combining data from digitized historical maps and land ownership register books from the Aruban Land Registry, users can gain an insight into the history of land ownership on the island, he said.

By applying AI-based, Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) algorithms, the digitized, difficult-to-read handwritten texts are made accessible to the public and transformed into searchable data. Martis said in some cases, digitized archives from Aruba, Curaçao and the Netherlands are combined and search results are sometimes surprising—in particular with data about the history of slavery. Users can search using different keywords and the site can even create family trees, which normally can be difficult because the slaves had no surnames.

“For the past 50 years I have been doing archival research and I must admit that I am proud of my small island that was able to achieve such incredible results in such a short time with the help of Internet Archive,” Martis said.

Jan Bant, a doctoral student in history from Aruba who lives in The Netherlands, relied heavily on the Coleccion Aruba when doing research for his master’s thesis in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. Although he was unable to return to the island, he accessed journals and newspaper articles from Europe to examine Aruba’s political climate between in the 1970s and 80s. Being able to enter key words and dates in the search function was particularly helpful in locating sources. Bant was able to uncover documents about protests, revealing the country’s somewhat radical traditions of commenting on world affairs despite its image as a calm player in the Caribbean, he said.

As Bant continues his PhD research on the role of sports in Dutch Caribbean communities, he is tapping into the Coleccion Aruba, including materials about the oil refinery and laborers who brought baseball to the island.

Bant contributed back to the portal by uploading his completed master’s thesis, which was completed in 2021. “There is a lot of research about Aruba that gets written but it’s never really used—often because people don’t know where to find it,” Bant said. “The Aruba Collection can also serve well as a repository to store research that has been done about Aruba. That’s what I think is very valuable.”

SERVING PATRONS

Aruba’s UNOCA Managing Director Ray-Anne Hernandez said the heritage portal allows users to easily search her foundation’s work of arts and culture. Researchers now can go to one place to locate digitized images and documents.

“We have collections that we want to share and have accessible to the public, so this was a logical step to be part of this collaboration,” Hernadez said. “In the collection, we have history. We have art, music, and education. It’s so much more than we initially thought it would be and that fills us with great pride and great joy. It’s not just that we made a website. It’s something that’s continually growing and everybody is using it.”

The Dutch Caribbean Digital Heritage Week will be held on Aruba April 8-12. For the first day, April 8, a day-long symposium is planned, titled “Connecting our Shared Heritage: Linking (Dutch) Caribbean Heritage Institutions and Collections”, with keynote speeches from Brewster Kahle (Internet Archive), Eppo van Nispen (Dutch Network for Digital Heritage NDE and Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision), and contributions from a wide range of heritage professionals from across the Dutch Caribbean, and the world. It will be livestreamed via https://coleccion.aw/stream.

[Editorial note: For another take on the Coleccion Aruba, see, “The Internet Archive Just Backed Up an Entire Caribbean Island” from Wired.]

Essential Music Concerts From Home: The Variety

Posted on April 1, 2024 by BZ Petroff

In early March 2020, much like the rest of the United States, the staff of the Internet Archive transitioned to fully remote work in anticipation of the prolonged pandemic. This change was monumental and, like all workplaces, we discovered the challenge of sustaining a feeling of connection, morale, and joy within the team.

Recognizing this challenge, our Director of Media & Access, Alexis Rossi, came up with a creative solution. It was already part of our workplace culture to have two weekly all-staff meetings—one at 10am PT Monday morning, and another at Friday lunch. As everyone moved to joining those meetings from home, Alexis began hosting short concerts before them by performers, particularly musicians, to uplift our team’s spirits. These concerts provided not only entertainment, but also a means of keeping our team engaged and the performers booked during uncertain times.

The initiative began with a performance by Alexis’s friend, Jefferson Bergey, whose talent for musical theater and captivating stage presence set the stage. At the time, we envisioned organizing these concerts for just a few months, as none of us could predict the duration of the pandemic.

Fast forward several years and our work world has undergone a profound transformation. Encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive response from our now mostly remote staff, we decided to continue the program, thus giving birth to “Essential Music Concerts From Home.” As we approach our fourth anniversary in April, we reflect on how this simple yet impactful idea has helped sustain our remote workplace culture through the years. We thought it would be fun to offer you a glimpse into some of the unique musical encounters enjoyed by the Internet Archive staff with some exceptionally talented musicians.

Jefferson Bergey

Jefferson Bergey is a professional musician and cherished figure in the Bay Area, known as “Fun for Hire.” His musical style epitomizes versatility, adapting to any desired vibe or genre with ease. Drawing from the rich foundations of jazz, blues, pop, folk, bluegrass, and rock, his songs are crafted with a distinct flair for musical theater. He is such a popular Bay Area performer, there’s even a burger named after him.

Jeanie & Chuck Poling

Jeanie & Chuck Poling have been making music together since 1982. Their act, Jeanie and Chuck’s Country Roundup, specializes in honky tonk and bluegrass tunes played on acoustic instruments. Their performances are known for blending music, humor, and showmanship to entertain audiences. Additionally, Chuck has served as the emcee at the Rooster Stage at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass since 2012.

Joliet

Joliet, hailing from Kansas City, is an independent singer/songwriter and live music streamer. Her vocal style is both distinctive and commanding. With her bold and expansive sound, Joliet offers up heartfelt and captivating charm. She plays live on platforms such as Smule and Twitch, where she has introduced her original compositions to audiences worldwide.

Ben Cosgrove

Ben Cosgrove is a nomadic composer, pianist, and multi-instrumentalist rooted in northern New England. Across his artistic journey, Ben’s compositions and performances have been shaped by his profound fascination with landscape, geography, place, and the environment.

Cello Joe

Cello Joe, also known as Joey Chang, defies convention within the realm of cellists. Cello Joe combines the cello with beatboxing, vocals, and live looping to create a unique fusion. His performances blend classical music with hip hop elements, showcasing his ability to generate rhythmic beats using both his cello and vocal talents in real-time. He is known for being the “Wildest Beatboxing Cellist in the West”.

Glitterfox

Glitterfox is a Portland Oregon based band. At the heart of Glitterfox are the band’s songwriters and frontpersons, the married couple Solange Igoa and Andrea Walker. Drawing from their personal struggles and experiences as queer, neurodivergent individuals, they infuse their songwriting with raw emotion. They imbue their music with a passion for Americana, grunge, and dance genres.

Rob Reich

Rob Reich epitomizes the essence of the San Francisco music scene, serving as a cornerstone of its vibrant underground community. Renowned for his eclectic style, he blends robust melodic concepts, rhythmic dynamism, and a penchant for irreverence and innovation.

Please note that these recordings were conducted via Zoom, which often leads to lower fidelity audio quality. For a more immersive experience, we encourage you to explore these artists further on their respective websites.

If you would like to perform for one our 10 minute concerts please contact bz@archive.org.

DLARC Preserves “Ham Radio & More” Radio Show

Posted on January 30, 2024 by kaysavetz

Ham Radio & More was a radio show about amateur radio that was broadcast from 1991 through 1997. More than 300 episodes of the program are now available online as part of the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC).

Ham Radio & More was the first radio show devoted to ham radio on the commercial radio band. It began as a one-hour show on KFNN 1510 AM in Phoenix, Arizona, then expanded to a two-hour format and national syndication. The program’s host, Len Winkler, invited guests to discuss the issues of the day and educate listeners about various aspects of the radio hobby. Today the episodes, some more than 30 years old, provide an invaluable time capsule of the ham radio hobby.

Photograph of dozens of cassette tape cases, each with hand-written labels indicating air date and topic of that episode. — just some of the HR&M cassette tapes

Len Winkler said, “I’m so happy that the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications took all my old shows and made them eternally available for everyone to hear and enjoy. I had the absolute pleasure, along with a few super knowledgeable co-hosts, to interview many of the people that made ham radio great in the past and now everyone can go back and listen to what they had to say. From the early beginnings of SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) to Senator Barry Goldwater to the daughter of Marconi. So much thanks to the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications for doing this amazing service.”

Other interviewees included magazine publisher Wayne Green, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Bob Heil, Bill Pasternak, Fred Maia, and other names well known to the amateur radio community. Discussion topics spanned the technical, such as signal propagation, to community issues, including the debate over the Morse code knowledge requirement for ham radio operators—a requirement eventually dropped, to the benefit of the community.

The radio programs were recorded on cassette tapes when they originally aired. Winkler digitized 149 episodes of the show himself in 2015 and 2016. The digitizing project paused for years. In January 2024 he sent the remaining cassettes to DLARC. Using two audio digitizing workstations, we digitized another 165 episodes in about three weeks. The combined collection is now available online: a total of 464 hours of programming, most of which have not been heard since their original air date. The collection represents nearly every episode of the show: only a few tapes went missing over the years or were unrepairable.

The Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications is funded by a grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) to create a free digital library for the radio community, researchers, educators, and students. DLARC invites radio clubs and individuals to submit material in any format. To contribute or ask questions about the project, contact: Kay Savetz at kay@archive.org or on Mastodon at dlarc@mastodon.radio.

The World’s Most Famous Mouse Joins the Public Domain

Posted on January 4, 2024 by Alexis Rossi

This year we are welcoming many works from 1928 into the U.S. public domain (books, movies, images, etc.), as well as recorded sound from 1923.

Some of the big events from 1928 include the first machine sliced and wrapped loaf of bread being sold, the fatal Okeechobee hurricane, the failure of the St. Francis Dam in Los Angeles, the discovery of a moldy petri dish that would lead to the creation of penicillin, Amelia Earheart flying across the Atlantic, and a certain mouse making his public debut.

Movies

Everybody’s talking about Mickey. On November 18th, 1928 Steamboat Willie was published, the third Mickey Mouse film by Walt Disney and the first one to be published with sound. The prior two Mickey Mouse films, including Plane Crazy, had not been picked up for distribution so this was the public’s first introduction to the mouse. Steamboat Willie may have been named after another popular movie that came out in 1928, Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr., or perhaps the Vaudeville song, “Steamboat Bill” (popularized in 1910) which was included in the soundtrack (along with the 19th century song “Turkey in the Straw”).

But there were many other movies that debuted in 1928, and here are just a few noted examples:

The Cameraman (Buster Keaton)
Champagne (Alfred Hitchcock)
Easy Virtue (Alfred Hitchcock)
Feel My Pulse (William Powell)
Four Sons (John Ford)
Hangman’s House (John Ford)
The Last Command (William Powell)
Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Lon Chaney)
The Lights of New York (Bryan Foy)
Lilac Time (Gary Cooper)
The Matinee Idol (Frank Capra)
Mother Machree (John Ford)
Our Dancing Daughters (Joan Crawford)
The Passion of Joan Of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
The Patsy (Marion Davies, Marie Dressler)
The Power of the Press (Frank Capra, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.)
The Red Dance (Dolores del Rio)
Sadie Thompson (Lionel barrymore, Gloria Swanson)
Speedy (Harold Lloyd)
Street Angel (Janet Gaynor)
Tempest (John Barrymore)
The Trail of ‘98 (Dolores del Rio)
Two Tars (Laurel and Hardy)
The Wedding March (Zasu Pitts, Fay Wray)
The Wind (Lilian Gish)
A Woman of Affairs (Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.)

You have 2 weeks left to remix films from 1928 into a submission for the Public Domain Day 2024 Remix Contest (deadline is January 17!).

Books

The second Winnie the Pooh book called The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne was published in 1928, along with other famous titles such as All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich M. Remarque, Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, and Tarzan Lord of the Jungle by Edgar R. Burroughs.

Browse some of the books published in 1928 on the site, including

Cawdor and other poems by Robinson Jeffers
The Last Post by Ford Madox Ford
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Peter Pan or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up by J.M. Barrie
Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley

Recorded music from 1923

Recorded sound enters the public domain on a different schedule, and this year we’re welcoming music from 1923.

Looking at our collections, it seems like the only song anyone really cared about was “Yes! We have no bananas” which was recorded by a silly number of musicians (including in Italian and Yiddish!) and even led to them trolling themselves with the “I’ve Got the Yes! We Have No Bananas Blues. Here’s the same artist, Billy Jones, both with bananas and annoyed about the bananas.

The Jazz Age was really swinging, and 1923 saw the first recordings by King Oliver’s Jazz Band, including early work from Louis Armstrong on Dipper Mouth Blues. The first recorded example of jazz band boogie-woogie also came out that year, The Fives by Tampa Blue Jazz Band. And dancing the Charleston became a craze in 1923, thanks to Charleston from the 1923 musical “Runnin’ Wild.”

While the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb was found in 1922, it wasn’t until February of 1923 that the tomb was unsealed and of course the event was memorialized in song, including Old King Tut by Billy Jones and Ernest Hare, and Tut-Ankh-Amen (In the Valley of the Kings) by S. S. Leviathan Orchestra.

Some popular songs from 1923 that are have joined the public domain include:

Down Hearted Blues by Bessie Smith
Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra
Who’s Sorry Now by Isham Jones Orchestra
That Old Gang of Mine by Billy Murray and Ed Smalle
Bambalina by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra
Swingin’ Down the Lane by Isham Jones Orchestra
Love Sends a Little Gift of Roses by Carl Fenton’s Orchestra
Dreamy Melody by Art Landry and his Call of the North Orchestra
No, No, Nora by Eddie Cantor

Come celebrate the public domain with us in person in San Francisco on January 24th, or virtually on January 25th.

Welcoming 1927 to the Public Domain

Posted on January 1, 2023 by Alexis Rossi

This year we are welcoming works from 1927 into the public domain in the United States, including books, periodicals, sheet music, and movies.

Big events of 1927 include the first transatlantic phone call from New York to London, the formation of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the first successful long distance demonstration of television, the release of the first popular “talkie,” The Jazz Singer, and the first nonstop transatlantic solo airplane flight, from New York to Paris, by Charles Lindbergh.

Movies

Despite the popularity of The Jazz Singer, movies were still mostly silent in 1927, including the gorgeous Metropolis by Fritz Lang. Laurel and Hardy’s first film, Putting Pants on Phillip, was released that year, along with an early Gary Cooper Western, Nevada, Joan Crawford in Spring Fever, Mary Pickford in My Best Girl, Clara Bow in Get Your Man, and Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings.

I was particularly taken with No Man’s Land, which gives top billing to a horse (Rex the Wonder Horse, in case you were wondering – if you’d like to follow his career he also starred in The King of Wild Horses and Black Cyclone).

Or we can time travel with Koko the Clown in Koko in 1999 where they apparently thought that at the turn of the last century everything would happen via automation and you’d get a wife from a vending machine for 25 cents.

Music

No new recorded music enters the public domain in the US this year — the next group of recorded music becomes available in 4 years, due to how the music modernization act is written — but we do have some fun new sheet music to explore. The biggies that are most remembered today are probably The Best Things in Life Are Free and I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream. But you should also take some time to play Dream Kisses, The Desert Song, My Ohio Home, and Girl of My Dreams.

Periodicals

Thousands of issues of periodicals from 1927 are entering the public domain, some from titles that are still well known today like:

You may also want to check out copies of The American Girl (published by the Girl Scouts), check up on the financial markets leading up to the Great Depression in the The Financial Times, or research bling in The Jewelers Circular.

Books

The Sherlock Holmes books came to an end in 1927, and with it the release of The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan-Doyle (vol I and vol II). Other biggies include Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather and Mosquitoes by William Faulkner.

But as always, the most fun is to be had perusing the books from 1927 for hidden gems. Enjoy the gorgeous art deco designs in Ideas & studies in stencilling & decorating, for instance.

Some other fun titles include

Celebrate Public Domain Day

You can join us to celebrate public domain day two ways this year, virtually or in person.

We are having a virtual party on January 19, 2023 at 1pm Pacific/4pm Eastern. REGISTER FOR THE VIRTUAL EVENT HERE!

And the next day we will have an in-person Film Remix Contest Screening Party on January 20, 2023 at 6pm at 300 Funston Ave in San Francisco, to watch this year’s Public Domain Day Remix Contest winning entries. REGISTER FOR THE IN-PERSON PARTY IN SAN FRANCISCO HERE!

New additions to the Internet Archive for July 2022

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Alexis Rossi

Many items are added to the Internet Archive’s collections every month, by us and by our patrons. Here’s a round up of some of the new media you might want to check out. Logging in might be required to borrow certain items.

Notable new collections from our patrons:

Programming Books: Books on programming, computer languages, and development.
The Angry Corrie: Every issue of The Angry Corrie, 1991-2011

Books – 78,091 New items in July

This month we’ve added books on varied subjects in more than 20 languages. Click through to explore, but here are a few interesting items to start with:

Audio Archive – 91,636 New Items in July

The audio archive contains recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Explore.

Goose Live at Radio City Music Hall on 2022-06-24

LibriVox Audiobooks – 119 New Items in July

Founded in 2005, Librivox is a community of volunteers from all over the world who record audiobooks of public domain texts in many different languages. Explore.

78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings – 8,888 New Items in July

Listen to this collection of 78rpm records, cylinder recordings, and other recordings from the early 20th century. Explore.

Anselmi Giuseppe – Delta TQD 3047 (1907-1909)

D’ Assy Pierre – Discophilia DIS 376 (1908-09)

Live Music Archive – 965 New Items in July

The Live Music Archive is a community committed to providing the highest quality live concerts in a lossless, downloadable format, along with the convenience of on-demand streaming (all with artist permission). Explore.

Movies – 135 New Items in July

Watch feature films, classic shorts, documentaries, propaganda, movie trailers, and more! Explore.

We Can Rebuild It: Using the Internet Archive to Discover Original Order

Posted on June 7, 2022 by Lori Donovan

Guest post by: Amanda Hill, Archivist of the Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County, a member of the Community Webs program and a contributor to the Internet Archive.

One of the things archivists get excited about is the importance of ‘original order’. This is the idea that the arrangement of records by their creator has significance to our understanding of the records themselves. Wherever possible, archivists will try to determine the original order of materials in their care.

An item received at the Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County in 2015 presented something of a puzzle in this respect. It was a scrapbook from the First World War, of newspaper clippings and other memorabilia which had been pasted into a printed book. The binding of the book had partially come apart and the early pages of the scrapbook had been jumbled into no particular order, with clippings dated 1917 mixed in with those from 1916.

Examination of the scrapbook revealed that its owner was Alice Deacon, born in Belleville, Ontario, on September 27th, 1899. She was the child of Daniel Deacon and his wife, Catherine Dugan. During the First World War, the Deacons were living at 107 Station Street, Belleville. They were Roman Catholics and Alice was probably a student at St. Michael’s Academy on Church Street.

Alice had three older brothers: James, Frederick and Francis (Frank). Frank joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force on March 23rd, 1916 in Belleville and it may have been this event which triggered Alice’s interest in the war. Frank’s service record is available from Library and Archives Canada.

The scrapbook mainly comprises cuttings from The Daily Intelligencer newspaper during the war, where Alice carefully recorded references to Belleville boys overseas, sometimes annotating the clippings with her own observations about whether a man had returned from the front, or which school he had attended.

Alongside the newspaper extracts are other more personal items, such as postcards, theatre programs, calling cards, invitations and ticket stubs. This page illustrates some of the variety:

Here we find an invitation, two pressed flowers “from ruins of a French village, May 1917” and a picture “off a box of chocolates Jim gave me for my birthday, 1916.”

Alice did not begin with blank pages: she used a copy of Richardson’s New Method for the Piano-Forte, originally published in 1859 by Nathan Richardson. In between Alice’s pastings, we can see parts of the text of the underlying book. Some of the pages still had visible page numbers, although most did not, but the majority had at least some legible words and phrases. This was the key to re-creating Alice’s original order.

We discovered that the Richardson book had been digitized by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was available online through the Internet Archive.

This digital copy proved essential in discovering the original order of the scrapbook. Using the Internet Archive’s searching facility, we were able to locate the identifiable words and match them to the page numbers of the original book. Once all the pages were identified, it was a simple matter to put them back into the order they would have been in when the book was intact.

Alice’s brother Frank came home safely from the war and was demobilized on May 23rd, 1919. Alice worked as a stenographer and bookkeeper in Belleville until 1929, when she married Leo Houlihan in St. Michael’s Church. She then left Belleville to live with Leo in Lindsay, Ontario. She died in 1955 and was buried in the Our Lady of Mercy Roman Catholic cemetery in Sarnia, Ontario.

Her scrapbook arrived back in Belleville by mail, sixty years after Alice’s death. Thanks are due to the anonymous donor for sharing this glimpse into a young woman’s wartime life, and also to our colleagues at the University of North Carolina and the Internet Archive for making it possible to reconstruct the scrapbook as it was when Alice first created it.

We have mainly been sharing our newspaper collection at the Internet Archive, but once it was digitized, we felt compelled to share Alice’s scrapbook there, too!

New additions to the Internet Archive for May 2022

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Alexis Rossi

Notable new collections from our patrons:

Bandwagon: The Journal of the Circus Historical Society
Console Living Room: Atari Lynx
U.S. Senate – A collection of hearing videos across all committees from the United States Senate.
CDi Collection – A collection of CDi (Interactive CD-ROM) CD-ROMs from the 1990s and 2000s.

Books – 52,300 New items in May

This month we’ve added books on varied subjects in more than 20 languages. Click through to explore, but here are a few interesting items to start with:

100 things you should know about prehistoric life

Audio Archive – 89,325 New Items in May

Goose Live at Westville, Music Bowl on 2022-05-28

LibriVox Audiobooks – 92 New Items in May

Founded in 2005, Librivox is a community of volunteers from all over the world who record audiobooks of public domain texts in many different languages. Explore.

78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings – 112 New Items in May

Listen to this collection of 78rpm records, cylinder recordings, and other recordings from the early 20th century. Explore.

Scampini Augusto – Verdi (Gram. Concert) GC 2 52615-6) 1907

Live Music Archive – 807 New Items in May

Circles Around The Sun Live at Wonder Bar on 2022-05-18

Netlabels – 223 New Items in May

This collection hosts complete, freely downloadable/streamable, often Creative Commons-licensed catalogs of ‘virtual record labels’. These ‘netlabels’ are non-profit, community-built entities dedicated to providing high quality, non-commercial, freely distributable MP3/OGG-format music for online download in a multitude of genres. Explore.

Movies – 110 New Items in May

Watch feature films, classic shorts, documentaries, propaganda, movie trailers, and more! Explore.

New additions to the Internet Archive for April 2022

Posted on May 7, 2022 by Alexis Rossi

Notable new collections from our patrons:

Chris Cromwell Rare Reel to Reel Tapes – Rare and recovered reel-to-reel tapes from a variety of sources and preserved by Chris Cromwell.
1940s Classic TV – Television from the 1940s.
Game Shows Archive – A collection of game shows throughout television history, involving chance, skill and luck, usually presided over by a host and providing in-show commercials.
Dutch Television – Television programs and videos in the Dutch language, or from the Netherlands.

Books – 50,109 New items in April

This month we’ve added books on varied subjects in more than 20 languages. Click through to explore, but here are a few interesting items to start with:

Zebra mussels and aquatic nuisance species

Audio Archive – 150,224 New Items in April

Cabinet Live at Sherman Theater on 2022-04-01

LibriVox Audiobooks – 99 New Items in April

Founded in 2005, Librivox is a community of volunteers from all over the world who record audiobooks of public domain texts in many different languages. Explore.

78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings – 6,745 New Items in April

Listen to this collection of 78rpm records, cylinder recordings, and other recordings from the early 20th century. Explore.

Live Music Archive – 909 New Items in April

The Wolf Tones Live at the Thunderbird Café Porch Stage on 2022-04-26

Netlabels – 111 New Items in April

Movies – 55 New Items in April

Watch feature films, classic shorts, documentaries, propaganda, movie trailers, and more! Explore.

New additions to the Internet Archive for March 2022

Posted on April 7, 2022 by Alexis Rossi

Notable new collections from our patrons:

Cleveland Museum of Art Lesson Plans – lesson plans produced by the Cleveland Museum of Art between approximately 2000 and 2013.
Type, Typewriter and Typography Catalogs – Catalogs related to typefaces, typesetting, fonts and typewriters.
Miscellaneous Punk Zines – Magazines described as part of Punk music and culture.
Avontuur Classics – (Dutch Language) comics of adventure and science fiction.

Books – 60,379 New items in March

This month we’ve added books on varied subjects in more than 20 languages. Click through to explore, but here are a few interesting items to start with:

Audio Archive – 93,954 New Items in March

LibriVox Audiobooks – 122 New Items in March

Founded in 2005, Librivox is a community of volunteers from all over the world who record audiobooks of public domain texts in many different languages. Explore.