| Vol.
I, No. 8 | Gardening
/ Memorial Day | May
18th, 2001 |
Books
& Literature
Links to Books & Lit On-Line
. Links
to Books & Lit On-Line  | Reading
Room
Library of Congress |
The amount of info on the web is enormous, as anyone who's ever tried to run a
search can attest to. And, to put it all in context, best estimates say
that only a fraction, maybe 20 - 40 % of what's out there is actually making its
way to the search engines.
Well ... Here
at DownStreet, we'd like to try to help. So each issue, we post a
few links in Books & Lit to sites that might interest you. Sometimes
the links will be related to one another ... sometimes we'll just
offer up a somewhat random sampling. In either case, we think we might be
able to help you find the kind of site you've been looking for.
Of course, while we can't vouch for the fact that every link we provide will be
of interest to everyone, we do our best to filter out the noise and the
bustle. ... Links
to The Civil War in Images, Music & Words  | Obsequies
Lincoln
Funeral
Rutland
Click for full size |
As
we've mentioned elsewhere, the wealth of Civil War literature and other
resources on the web is astounding. That made it difficult to select sites
for this month's Links to Books & Lit On-Line. But, as usual, we
looked at more than 100 sites and came up with what we think are some of the
more interesting one's out there. ... Unlike
other Links to Books & Lit, this time, we've also decided to include sites
whose primary emphasis may be music & song, art, or photography. The
reason is straightforward: Since the subject is history
here, we thought links to more than texts alone would help you to get a fuller
appreciation for The Civil War. On the other hand, while there are
numerous texts out there on more strictly historical aspects of The War, we
confined our links to texts to fiction, poetry, and magazines from the
period. ... Given the wealth of information
available, these links are certainly not exhaustive, nor even necessarily
representative of what's out there. But we do think they are all, in their
own way, worthwhile stops for anyone interested in The Civil War. ... .
American
Memory -- from the Library of Congress
We've pointed to the
Library of Congress' digital collections before, but this month's Memorial
Day theme means that we have to point you directly to the American Memory
collection. ... While not about the Civil War only, you're
unlikely to find a more exhaustive resource on the net for all sorts of
material about the war. ...
.
The American
Memory collection includes just about every type of medium -- from
books, manuscripts, and sheet music to maps, motion pictures, photos &
prints, and sound recordings. For such an exhaustive collection, the
site is reasonably easy to navigate. For Civil War material, you have
several ways to go, which may pose a bit of a problem for some users.
You can go to the History Collections by click on Collection Finder, then
History, where you'll find a list of more than 70 separate collections which
you can check or not to narrow your search. Instead of searching all
the collections, you can, for example, choose only Photos & Prints,
which narrows it down to about 50 collections. Either way, when you're
presented with the list of collection, you can simply click on any one of
them to go to that collection alone. But if you want the fullest list
possible, then simply choose Search from the Main Page. If you, you'll
notice that the default in the search boxes is set to a max of 500
bibliographic records!
.
We typed
in Civil War -- with "match this exact phrase" selected vs.
"match all" or "any" ... and "match
words exactly" vs. "include variants" -- and the engine
returned 500 items in seconds. We then up'd the ante to 1000 with the
same results, so we up'd it one more time to 10,000 and finally found 4,456
entries that matched Civil War exactly, including the text of Coolidge's
Accepting the Monument of Gen. George Gordon Meade at Washington, D.C.,
October 19, 1927. Finally, we also typed in "War of the
Rebellion" with the same options and found another 251 entries.
... Need we say more?
Rating: *****
[5 STARS]
. Making
of America: Cornell Univ.
Also not strictly a site about The
Civil War, nonetheless, what Cornell -- with help from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation -- has managed here is very worthwhile. ...
.
What
have they managed? ... A "digital library of primary sources in
American social history from the antebellum period through
reconstruction." That translates into "access to 267
monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century
imprints." Among the offerings? The Atlantic Monthly
(1857 - 1901), The Continental Monthly (1862 - 1864), Harper's
New Monthly Magazine (1850 - 1899), The Living Age (1844 -
1900), The New-England Magazine (1831 - 1835), New Englander
(1843 - 1892), The North American Review (1815 - 1900), The Old
Guard (1863 - 1867), Putnam's Monthly (1853 - 1870), Scientific
American (1846 - 1869), and The United States Democratic Review
(1837 - 1859). They've scanned images of the actual pages, all of
which are available for viewing. But then they ran them through
Optical Character Recognition [OCR] to turn them into text files that can be
searched, as well.
.
The site also
contains several useful search features, including a Proximity, Frequency,
Bibliographic, and Index searches, as well as a Boolean AND search
option. {For an example, we searched on "Whitman," found
'Walt Whitman', then requested the applicable articles and found 28
entries.} ... If you want to read about how the war was being
played out {or ignored} on the pages of the nation's more widely circulated
magazines of the time, this is the place to go.
Rating:
***** [5 STARS]
. CivilWarLiterature.com
[Harper's]
As we noted above, Cornell's site will take you to Harper's
and lots of other magazines from the period, as well. But for literary
interest, layout, ease of use, and just plain general interest, we have to
give it to Harper's own version of their years from the war.
...
.
They've pulled together fifteen
stories here in what they refer to as A Sampler of Civil War
Literature," along with "related news articles, illustrations,
cartoons, and commentary." The result is something well worth a
visit. ... The site is divided up into several main sections,
including: Aspects of Military Life, Battles, Blacks as Principal
Characters, Children, Divided Family Loyalties, Emancipation Proclamation,
Escapes, Guerilla Action, and Women as Principal Characters -- some of which
provide first person narratives of events. All are accompanied by
illustrations or photos, and some, by related articles from elsewhere in the
Harper's of the time.
.
Like we
said, you won't find anything here you can't find at Cornell. But what
you do find will show that it has been put together with great care, an eye
to aesthetics, and, most of all, a sense of what is of interest. Well
worth a visit. ...
Rating: **** [4 stars]
. Other
Links to The Civil War in Images, Music & Words
These links are
not reviewed here. But trust us; they're about as worthwhile as they
come. If we were going to rate each individually, none would walk away
with less than 4 stars, and some would even take home 5. ...
.
There
are two really great comprehensive on-line indexes to Civil War material out
there that we found ...
.
From the United States Civil War Center at LSU.
... These pages provide links to dozens and dozens of Civil
War sites on the web in the following categories:
USCWC
-- Books, Magazines, Booksellers, Lists, and Reviews USCWC
-- Diaries, Letters, and Stories-Recollections USCWC
-- Education, Opinions-Editorials, Archives & Special
Collections USCWC
-- Films-Theatre, Indexes, Music, and Writers-Literature USCWC
-- Images-Art, Maps, and Multimedia USCWC
-- Journalism, Pacifism, Reconstruction, and Technology U.S.
Civil War Center -- Civil War Photographs
.
From Jim Janke's The American Civil War at
Dakota State Univ. ... Like the LSU site, these pages
also provide links to dozens of other sites. There's inevitably
going to be some duplication here, but you can fairly quickly weed out
the repeats.
American
Civil War Collection at the Electronic Text Center
This
offering is from the Univ. of Virginia and includes letters, diaries,
and full texts of some major literary works of the period.
. Civil
War Writings
This collection of letters & diaries is part
of a larger student project at UVA and focuses on two places -- Augusta
County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, organized by themes
of Home and Loved Ones, Military Service, and Death and Spirituality.
. Poetry
and Music of the War Between the States
This site on an EROLS
server is a dedication to the ancestors of the site's creator, Kathie
Watson, who fought in Texas units. It includes Confederate &
Union Poetry, as well as Music from the war.
. *******
******* If you know of any
links that you think are worthwhile, why not send them along to ...
links@downstreetmagazine.com
... If we agree, we'll be happy to include
them in an upcoming issue to pass the word along. ...
Thanks. *******
******* .
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