Forthcoming Digital Collections

The New York Public Library launched its digital collections with Digital Schomburg, the first collection of texts and images digitized for use through the Internet, in May 1998. The collection features 56 texts and 500 images pertaining to African American history. The Dance Heritage Coalition became available in September 1998 and features finding aids to archival dance collections at The New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, Harvard University, American Dance Festival, and Ohio State University.

Upcoming collections include:

Images of Dance
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will make available 1,500 photographs of dance performances in America, featuring images of dance companies in New York and the work of Roger Ward. This project is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
Available on Web fall 1998

Marriage, Women, and the Law in the U.S. and the U.K., 1815-1914
Sponsored by the Research Libraries Group (RLG), Marriage, Women, and the Law in the U.S. and the U.K. assembles a virtual collection of texts and illustrations centered around the theme of marriage and morality in law and society. The texts have been drawn from books and journals, many of them legal briefs and treatises dating from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Participating institutions include Harvard University, New York University, Stanford University, and Leeds University in Great Britain.
Available on Web fall 1998

Small-Town America: Stereoscopic Views from the Robert Dennis Collection, 1850-1910
A remarkable collection of 12,500 views of the tristate region of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The collection, which will be accessible as part of the Library of Congress’s American Memory site as well as from The New York Public Library’s Digital Library Collections site, provides a rich view of daily life in small-town America. The  digitization of these materials is funded by the Ameritech Corporation through a grant program administered by the Library of Congress. Caption.
Available on Web fall 1998

Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York
From 1935 to 1938, photographer Berenice Abbott documented the New York City metropolitan area as part of the Federal Art Project, a Works Progress Administration program. These images are now very popular for their views of New York City during the Depression. The New York Public Library owns copies of nearly 95 percent of the 300 prints in the series and has digitized and cataloged them for access through the Web.
Available on Web summer 1999

Performing Arts Manuscripts & Archives
With sponsorship by the Delmas Foundation, The New York Public Library will create online finding aids for archival collections at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Center for the Humanities. Highlights include finding aids for Edward Albee scripts, New York City Ballet scores, and the Lillian Gish papers.
Available on Web summer 1999

Urban Landscape Photography in the Romana Javitz Collection
In 1992, as its contribution to the RLG-sponsored Digital Image Access Project (DIAP), The New York Public Library digitized 1,033 photographs of urban landscapes from its Romana Javitz Collection. Romana Javitz, head of the Library’s Picture Collection from 1929 to 1968, collected an impressive range of 20th-century American photography, including works by Berenice Abbott, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, and Dorothea Lange. The entire collection was cataloged with a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1991.
Available on Web summer 1999

Black New York
Black New York was part of the Writer's Program of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) established during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The collection will present over 9,000 pages of 41 studies of the history of blacks in New York City. Featured are biographical sketches, studies relating to cultural achievements, history, slavery, economics, sports, theater, and churches. Authors of the studies include Ralph Ellison, Abram Hill, and Ellen Tarry.
Available on Web winter 1999

Travels Along the Hudson
The New York Public Library has organized a cooperative project to document the Hudson River Valley's 19th-century history, providing a wealth of information about life in the region. This project will bring together, in a centralized digital collection, selected materials housed at The New York Public Library, The New York State Library, The New-York Historical Society, The Adirondack Museum, The Albany Institute of History and Art, The Hudson River Maritime Museum, The Crandall Public Library, The Adriance Memorial Library, The Vassar College Library, and the library at SUNY Albany. Funding for the site has been provided by the New York State Department of Education's Electronic Doorway Library Program. Caption.
Available on Web winter 1999

Making of America: Transportation, 1869-1900
Sponsored by the Digital Library Federation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Making of America is a cooperative project of The New York Public Library, University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, Cornell University, and Pennsylvania State University. The collection will highlight the development of railroads and their relationship to the cultural, economic, and political development
of the country.
Available on Web in the year 2000

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Millennium Project
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will digitize some of its key collections with funding from a two-year National Endowment for the Arts grant. The site will feature representations of early American dance, music, and theatre, in all forms, including posters, programs, stage set renderings, clippings, and scrapbooks. Other formats will include digital sound, video, and film.
Available on Web in the year 2000

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pro: th: 9-16-98

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