New Collections in American Memory

["danna c. bell-russel" <dbell@LOC.GOV>]

Good afternoon,

This announcement is being sent to a number of lists. Please accept our
apologies for duplicate postings.

The American Memory online collections announces the addition of two new
collections to the over 100 currently available on the website

Working in Paterson: Occupational Heritage in an Urban Setting presents
approximately 500 interview excerpts and approximately 3800 photographs
from the Working in Paterson Folklife Project of the American Folklife
Center <http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife> at the Library of Congress. This
collection can be found at the following URL:
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wiphtml/>

The four-month study of occupational culture in Paterson, New Jersey, was
conducted in 1994.  Paterson is considered to be the cradle of the
Industrial Revolution in America.  It was founded in 1791 by the Society
for Establishing Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.), a group that had U.S.
Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton as an advocate.  The basis for
Paterson's manufacturing potential was the Great Falls on the Passaic
River.  Paterson went on to become the largest silk manufacturing center in
the nation as well as a leader in the manufacture of many other products,
from railroad locomotives to firearms.

The documentary materials presented in this online collection explore how
this industrial heritage expresses itself in Paterson today: in its work
sites, work processes, and memories of workers. The online presentation
also includes interpretive essays exploring such topics as work in the
African-American community, a distinctive food tradition (the Hot Texas
Wiener), the ethnography of a single work place (Watson Machine
International), business life along a single street in Paterson (21st
Avenue), and narratives told by retired workers.

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress was created by
Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife." The Center
incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established at the
Library in 1928 as a repository for American folk music. The Center and its
collections have grown to encompass all aspects of folklife from this
country and around the world.

The second new American Memory collection is Emile Berliner and the Birth
of the Recording
Industry.  Available at <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/berlhtml/>, the
collection is a selection of more than 400 items from the Emile Berliner
Papers and 108 Berliner sound recordings from the Library of Congress's
Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.  Berliner
(1851-1929), an immigrant and a largely self-educated man, was responsible
for the development of the microphone, the flat recording disc and the
gramophone player.  Although the focus of this online collection is on the
gramophone and its recordings, it includes much evidence of Berliner's
other interests, such as information on his businesses, his crusades for
public-health issues, his philanthropy, his musical composition, and even
his poetry.  Spanning the years 1870 to 1956, the collection comprises
correspondence, articles, lectures, speeches, scrapbooks, photographs,
catalogs, clippings, experiment notes, and rare sound recordings.

More than 100 sound recordings from the Berliner Gramophone Co. are
featured on the site, demonstrating the various genres produced in the
1890s, including band music, instrumentals, comedy, spoken word, popular
songs, opera, and foreign-language songs. Noted performers such as the
Sousa Band appear, and rarities are featured such as a recording of Buffalo
Bill giving his Sentiments on the Cuban Question just prior to the
Spanish-American War and Native-American ghost dances recorded by the noted
ethnologist James Mooney.

Please direct any questions to <http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-memory.html>

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