Message-Id: <199908251521.IAA29048@dns.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:26:02 -0400 From: Tamara Swora-Gober <mailto:tswo@LOC.GOV> Subject: LC National Digital Library Program announces release of Stern To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
This message is being widely posted *********************************The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division announce the release of "We'll Sing to Abe Our Song!: Sheet Music about Lincoln, Emancipation and the Civil War” from the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana. The collection is at the American Memory website:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/scsmhtml/scsmhome.html
The collection includes more than two hundred compositions that represent Lincoln and the war as reflected in popular music. The collection spans the years from Lincoln's campaign for president in 1859 through the centenary of Lincoln's birth in 1909. This sheet music is part of a collection of Lincoln-related materials given to the Library in 1953 by Alfred Whital Stern. The Stern Collection is widely regarded as the greatest collection of Lincolniana assembled by a private individual.
This addition to Mr. Lincoln's Virtual Library http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml includes songs that show Lincoln's popularity, or lack thereof, during his campaigns, the Civil War, and after his death. Other public figures represented in the songs are Frederick Douglass, Ulysses Grant, Andrew Johnson, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee. The collection also highlights some of the advances in printing techniques, such as color lithography, that developed during this fifty-year period. It also documents some of the changes in commercial advertising during this era, such as the use of the blank pages in printed sheet music for printing music-company catalogs.
Decades before the invention of radio and television, sheet music was a means of expressing popular attitudes toward public figures and current events. The sheet music collected by Alfred Whital Stern provides a unique and valuable view of one of our greatest presidents, as well as a few tunes to hum.
The materials in this collection are available for downloading not only in JPEG format but also as GIF and archival TIFF files. Having a variety of image files available allows for the creation of high-resolution copies that can be easily printed for use in musical performances.
Digitizing the Collection The materials in "We'll Sing to Abe Our Song!" were scanned at 300 dpi on a variety of capture devices. Covers were captured as grayscale or color images using a UMAX Mirage IIse flatbed scanner or a 4-by-5 camera with a Phase One digital back. Interior pages were captured as bitonal digital images using a Bookeye overhead capture device. The decision to capture the interior pages as bitonal images resulted from a usability survey that compared the quality of printouts. The survey determined that printing from bitonal images resulted in clearer copies than printing from grayscale. Because the music in the collection is meant to be performed, the clarity of printed copies was a significant factor in determining the format of collection image files.
The collection offers electronic transcriptions of all lyrics. The lyrics were transcribed at the Library of Congress and tagged in HTML for online display.
Please direct any questions about this collection to mailto:NDLPCOLL@loc.gov