New
York City, May 4, 1998: With a host of unprecedented digital resources
available through the World Wide Web, The New York Public Library is entering
a new dimension of Library service. Today the Library launches its Digital
Library Collections website which features a wide range of primary source
materials from The New York Public Library's four research libraries. The
first collection accessible from the site is Digital Schomburg,
comprising 56 texts and more than 500 images drawn from Library materials
relating to African American history and culture. An additional eight collections
are currently in development, and the site will continue to grow rapidly
in coming years (see
enclosed Forthcoming Digital Collections fact sheet). Like all the
Library's collections, online resources may be used free of charge. The
Digital Library Collections home page can be found on the World Wide Web
at digital.nypl.org. Internet design
services have been provided by Pegasus Internet, Inc.
"The Internet has opened a world of possibility for expanding access to Library collections," said William D. Walker, The New York Public Library's Andrew W. Mellon Director of The Research Libraries. "Now an author in California, a doctoral candidate in London, or a seventh grader in Staten Island can have access to materials from our collections without having to travel to Manhattan. These items represent only a small percentage of our total collections," said Mr. Walker, "but mark the first step toward a future when online use of Library materials, especially unique and primary source materials, will grow to be commonplace."
The Library will soon make thousands of books, manuscripts, photographs, engravings, audio recordings, and video recordings available through the Digital Library Collections home page, documenting a wide range of subjects in the humanities, sciences, and performing arts. The availability of these materials through the web not only makes them more broadly accessible but aids in their preservation, since use of digital representations minimizes handling of often rare and fragile original source items. As one of the largest research libraries in the United States, The New York Public Library has played a key role in national efforts to develop standards for digital library development and participates in cooperative projects with other research institutions and universities.
The online collections currently in development include Small Town America: Stereoscopic Views from the Robert Dennis Collection, 1850-1910; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Millennium Project; Urban Landscape Photography in the Romana Javitz Collection; and Berenice Abbott's Changing New York. The Library is also putting materials online through participation in four projects organized by several library consortia. These include Marriage and the Law in the U.S. and the U.K.; the Global Migration Project; Travels Along the Hudson, and Making of America: Transportation, 1869-1900.
The Digital Library Collections home page is accessible through The New York Public Library's newly designed home page at www.nypl.org. Since the site was launched in 1995, millions of Library users have been able to call on a wide variety of resources through the World Wide Web, including the vast catalogs of NYPL's branch and research libraries. Now, as Library collection materials are put online, their catalog entries will be linked to the digital items. Other online resources currently offered by The New York Public Library include periodicals indexes, community information, health databases, listings of Library exhibitions and programs, booklists, press releases, and an online bookstore.
Digital Schomburg
In Digital Schomburg, researchers can call on a rich assortment
of materials documenting African American history and culture in the 19th
and early 20th centuries. The site includes two components, "Images of
African Americans in the 19th Century" and "19th-Century African American
Women Writers." The materials are drawn primarily from The New York Public
Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the world's
leading research facilities devoted to the preservation of materials on
the global African and African diasporan experiences. The Schomburg Center
is located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard at 135th Street in Harlem. It is
named for Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, the scholar and bibliophile, whose
collection of books, manuscripts, and artworks formed the basis of the
Center's renowned collections. "In addition to recording the physical characteristics
of their African American subjects, the images in Digital Schomburg
document the social, political, and cultural worlds of African American
people from slavery to various stages of quasi freedom," said Howard Dodson,
Director of the Schomburg Center. The images are organized into 14 categories
such as "Civil War," "Cultural Expression," "Education," "Family," "Politics,"
"Reconstruction," and "Slavery." Included are illustrations of African
American soldiers during the Civil War, a photograph of a baby in an elaborate
christening gown, and a 1905 photo of an elderly traveling minstrel holding
his banjo and cane.
The 56 texts in the collection include essays, works of fiction and poetry, and autobiography and biography. Among them are Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South, one of the major works of the early black feminist movement; Ann Plato's Essays, the first collection of essays published by an African American in book form; Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phillis Wheatley, the first book published by an African American; and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, one of the few extant women's slave narratives.
Planning and implementation of Digital Schomburg has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Selection and digitization of the images available through Digital Schomburg was supported by the New York State Department of Education's Electronic Doorway Library Program.
Digital Library Collections Fact Sheet
pro: hs, th: 4-29-98
hscher: pro: 4-29-98
revised: thoerenz: pro: 5-1-98, 9-21-98