Message-Id: <199908091959.MAA18146@dns.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 16:05:57 -0400 From: Tamara Swora-Gober <mailto:tswo@LOC.GOV> Subject: LC National Digital Library Program announces release of Coolidge To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
This announcement is being widely posted.**************************************** The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program announces the release of “Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929” at the American Memory website, with materials from the following Library of Congress Divisions: Manuscript Division, Prints and Photographs Division, Collections Management Division for the General Collections, and the Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division all at:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html
This online compilation, made possible with the generous support of Laurance S. and Mary French Rockefeller, assembles a broad array of Library of Congress source materials documenting the prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition. The themes of the collection were identified by the American Memory project team in collaboration with Library of Congress staff members and an advisory panel of historians. The collection materials draw attention on the one hand to business concerns, such as advertising, marketing, merchandising, and industrialization, and on the other to popular notions about responsible consumerism, thriftiness, and efficiency in the home. The collection also focuses on President Coolidge’s idea of government, and on Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover's standardization initiatives. Other materials document groups that could not participate fully in the emergent consumer economy, notably farmers and immigrants. Collection materials suggest connections among some of the key technological developments, government structures, social organizations, and cultural assumptions that worked together to reinforce the mass consumer economy.
Among items of special interest are research studies and manuscript materials that document the spending habits of African Americans, the activities of African American businesses, and the northward migration in search of better opportunities. Other notable materials include information on consumer activism; studies of urban and rural women as consumers; selections from the papers of Edward L Bernays, a founding father of public relations; and the diaries of White House physician Joel T. Boone, giving his private view of the Coolidge family.
The collection is in a variety of formats and includes nearly 200 selections from twelve collections of personal papers and two collections of institutional papers from the Manuscript Division; 74 books, pamphlets, and legislative documents from the General Collections, along with selections from 34 consumer and trade journals; over 60 speeches by Coolidge, 8 of which are published here for the first time; 181 photographs from the National Photo Company Collection held by the Prints and Photographs Division; and 5 short films and 7 audio selections of Coolidge speeches from the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.
Digitizing the Collection
The documents included in Prosperity and Thrift comprise manuscripts and printed matter. Each document is reproduced as a set of facsimile page images and a searchable text. For 104 documents, the accompanying searchable text consists of a transcription. Although a few document images were produced in 1998-99, most of the collection's documents were scanned in 1994-95 using the Xerox (Kurzweil) K5200 scanner. The Xerox K5200 scanner does not accept pages over 8.5 inches in width. Larger pages, including many of the periodical issues in the collection, were scanned on other tabletop scanners.
The digital reproductions of the 185 photographs in Prosperity and Thrift were produced by scanning 8 x 10-inch negatives that represent copies of prints in the collections of the Library's Prints and Photographs Division.
The original motion pictures included in Prosperity and Thrift are 35 mm prints and these were transferred to BetaSP videotape. In the video mastering process, the playback speeds were adjusted to present the appearance of natural motion to the greatest degree possible. In order to facilitate downloading by American Memory users, the file sizes of the best quality (and hence largest) MPEG versions have been limited to 40 megabytes or less, which represents a running time of about four minutes.
The collection is accompanied by an alphabetically arranged guide providing information about prominent individuals, organizations, concepts, and publications of the Coolidge era replete with hyperlink pointers to collection materials.
There are now over 60 collections available at the American Memory website http://memory.loc.gov
Please send any questions about this collection to mailto:NDLPCOLL@loc.gov.