Nineteenth-Century Twitter

Cultural critics have gone back and forth about the effect that technologies like text messaging or Twitter are having on the future of communication, asking, for instance, whether Twitter’s 140-character limit presages the death of the English language*. But, as is often the case, the new is already quite old; the 21st century didn’t invent brevity:

This is a detail from the “Social Salad” column, which ran on the front page of the Sunday Morning Transcript in Providence during 1883 and 1884. (To view a full-page image, click here.) This example is from the edition of 3 February 1884, and it includes brief, straightforward notices of society gossip (“Mrs. Wm. H. Gill, of West Hartfield is visiting friends in town.”) as well as aphoristic observations along the lines of those typically found in an almanac (“A warm kitchen is a safer abiding place on Sunday than a cold church.”).

The Rhode Island Historical Society is the repository for the Rhode Island Newspaper Project, and holds the largest collection of Rhode Island Newspapers in existence. For more information, visit the Library website.

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* See, for instance, Lily Huang, “The Death of English (LOL).” Newsweek, August 11, 2008.

Uncovering Hidden Collections: a Look at the RIHS Graphics Collection Survey Project

By Jim DaMico, Graphics Project Archivist

On January 16, 2007, the RIHS Library embarked on a systematic survey of the entire collection of graphic materials held by the Society. This collection includes visual materials ranging from 17^th century maps to 1910’s picture postcards to 1970’s television footage. Not surprisingly, photographic prints and negatives make up the majority of the collection surveyed so far. The primary reason for this mammoth undertaking is to make accessible, through the library’s online public access catalog NETOP, the rich visual and auditory resources that have been collected by the Society since 1822.

The first step to making any collection accessible is to know what it contains. The Project Archivist pulls each box from the shelf, opens the box and does a visual inspection of the overall material. This allows the archivist to determine what preservation steps can be taken at this initial stage, such as re-housing items using archivally sound storage. The next step is to create a minimal, core catalog record of descriptive information which is then entered into a database.

The catalog record includes the title, creator, date, description, donor and preservation notes. We also record the quantity of new storage material needed to protect the items adequately.  The importance of knowing, for example, that we need 82,000 new sleeves is useful for determining a yearly budget for supplies or for applying for small preservation grants that provide for archival supplies. This survey and collecting the data is also important to set preservation and conservation priorities and determine disaster response priorities.

Much like other cultural institutions across the United States, space is at a premium in the library building. A concerted effort has been made to maximize shelf space by storing like-sized boxes together and consolidating where possible.

To date, a total of 5,668 collections containing 154,730 individual items and occupying 619 linear feet have been examined. We have estimated that the data collected so far will result in a 30% increase to the graphics holdings available through our online catalog, NETOP. When complete, this survey will represent a major strategic advancement for the Society’s collection management efforts.

An example of a before and after processing a large photograph collection:

BEFORE

AFTER

The Land of Generica

Nathaniel Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator is the classic manual for sailors, offering practical (not surprisingly) advice for all manner of maritime situations. Our Technical Services Librarian recently added a copy to our online catalog, which gave me a reason to look through the volume, and I came across the following image (borrowed from Google Books):

Click to view in Google Books

Designed as an teaching aid for future navigators, this map depicts all the usual parts of the map labeled generically (e.g. the “Ocean” ocean surrounds the island “Island”), creating an imaginary land of the generic (not to be confused with Generica proper). If you’re interested in this type of imaginary cartography, the Strange Maps blog has many more examples

Megan Kate Nelson Lecture

(Visit our online calendar to keep up with events and closings.)

Join us this Thursday evening at the Historical Society Library from 6:30-7:30, when Megan Kate Nelson will discuss her book project, “Ruin Nation: The Destruction of the South and the Making of America during the Civil War Era.” She will explain how and why Americans destroyed southern cities, plantations, forests, and men, and how both soldiers and civilians responded to these different kinds of ruins. She will also talk about the challenges of investigating the environmental history of the Civil War, and the important role the letters and diaries of New Englanders play in her research.

Megan Kate Nelson received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Iowa in 2002 and is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton. Her first book, Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, 2005) will be released in paperback in 2009. Nelson has received five fellowships to support the research and writing of her second book, Ruin Nation: The Destruction of the South and the Making of America during the American Civil War. Her research is funded by the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Research Award.

Happy Independence Day

Yes, it’s true that July 4th is the traditional day of celebrating the 13 American Colonies’ independence from Great Britain. But on 4 May 1776* Rhode Island became the first colony to separate themselves from the crown. The broadside declaration of Rhode Island’s independence featured here is one of only two known copies**:

(The full title is actually the slightly wordier: “An Act Repealing an Act Intituled, ‘An Act for the More Effectual Securing to His Majesty the Allegiance of His Subjects in this His Colony and Dominion of Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations;’ and Altering the Form of Commissions, of All Writs and Processes in the Courts, and of the Oaths Prescribed by Law.”)***

One aspect of the American Revolution that this document illustrates clearly is the practical (and often bureaucratic) realities of declaring independence: getting rid of a king means changing a lot of letterhead, or at least removing his name from a lot of documents and ceremonies. It is, after all, technically an act repealing an act.  And after the string of impassioned “whereas”-es  (“. . . confiscate our Property, and spread Fire, Sword and Desolation . . .”) the bulk of the document is all about changing the wording of oaths for civil servants.

This copy of the document also displays the shift from “colony” to “state” in a moment of transition. It was not until July 18th that the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to abandon the word “colony”****, and an early hand has written “State” over each mention of “Colony” in the “General Officers” and “Town Officers” paragraphs of the newly revised oaths:

Henry Ward, the General Assembly’s secretary, signed this copy (and also the Princeton copy), as evidence of its validity.

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* The day began (according to vol. VII, page 512 of Records of the Colony of Rhode Island) with a vote on procuring shovels for the colony’s military brigade.

** The other copy is in Princeton University’s Andre De Coppet Collection. This copy is signed but does not include the emendations of “Colony” to “State”. The original manuscript act is held by the Rhode Island State Archives.

***G1157 Broadsides 1776 No.6:  “An Act Repealing an Act . . .”, [Providence: John Carter, 1776].  Alden #661; Evans 15056; Winship p. 34.

**** Sydney James, Colonial Rhode Island, A History, New York: Scribners, 1975.