Resources for American Studies Issue 62 2009 Issue 62 2009 Resources for American Studies British Association for American Studies Library and Resources Sub‐Committee ISSN 1746‐9414 (Print) SSN 1746‐9422 (Online) Resources for American Studies British Association for American Studies Library and Resources Sub‐Committee Resources for American Studies is the annual publication of the British Association for American Studies (B.A.A.S.) Library and Resources Sub‐Committee. The Sub‐Committee aims to bring together those who work in libraries with American Studies interests, to advise on library provision for American Studies and to initiate and co‐ordinate bibliographic projects for scholars and librarians working in the field. Chair: R. J. Ellis, University of Birmingham Resources for American Studies is sent free of charge to individuals and institutions on request. We would like to thank B.A.A.S. and the U.S. Embassy, London, for their financial support. Resources for American Studies welcomes submissions and books or other materials for review, as well as advertisements: The Editor, Resources for American Studies The British Library Americas Collections 96 Euston Road NW1 2DB [email protected] The journal is also available online via the ‘resources’ section of the B.A.A.S. website at: http://www.baas.ac.uk Contents TWITTER: WHO’S WORTH FOLLOWING? 1 WWWEB SITES WWWORTH WWWATCHING 3 AFRICAN AMERICANS IN POLITICS 3 READING THE “NEGRO BIBLE”: ONLINE ACCESS TO JET AND EBONY 7 ‘AND IF YOU COME BACK I’LL SHOOT YOU...’: COLLECTING FOR AN ELECTIONS ARCHIVE 17 USING THE INTERNET FOR AMERICAN STUDIES 27 VERE HARMSWORTH LIBRARY, ROTHERMERE AMERICAN INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY 37 THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE DATABASE (GREENWOOD): 41 Contributors Bella Adams, Lecturer in American Studies and Director of the American Studies Resource Centre, Liverpool John Moores University Philip Davies, Director, Eccles Centre for American Studies; Professor Emeritus, DMU R. J. Ellis, Professor of American Studies, University of Birmingham Rose Goodier, Faculty Team Librarian, English and American Studies, Drama and Art History, The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester Jane Rawson, Vere Harmsworth Librarian‐in‐Charge, OULS Matthew Shaw (editor), Curator, US Collections, British Library, [email protected] Donald Tait, Subject Librarian, Arts & Social Sciences faculty support team, Glasgow University Library, email: [email protected] Resources for American Studies Twitter: Who’s Worth Following? Twitter, as readers will know, is the social networking tool of 2009. Short messages – ‘tweets’ – of up to 140 characters allow members to quickly post to the web, whether from the desktop, SMS or smartphone. Its democratic format allows you to follow pretty much anyone, from @StephenFry to @WhiteHouse, and to have your own observations, links and questions followed reciprocally. Conversely, you don’t have to follow ‘followers’, and can block dubious twitters, making it a [www.flickr.com/photos/cc_chapman/565934606/] relatively spam-free medium. ‘Hashtags’ (such as #followfridays or #politics) provide a kind of archiving and searching facility, as well as leading to certain online games (e.g. @trvia or #chainstory) The service is also real-time, reflective of user interests, possibly challenging the dominance of the major search engines and perhaps RSS feeds. Although twitter can be used to ‘broadcast’ to one’s followers, it’s also an excellent way of finding out things in a quicker, more focussed way. • _Americas – Americas Collections at the British Library • AmericanStudies - UEA • Harmsworth – Vere Harmsworth Library, Rothermere, University of Oxford • Larrysabato – the political science professor 1 Issue 62 Finally, Twitter is becoming a powerful, and up-to-the minute search engine. See also http://delicious.com/biz/twitter 2 Resources for American Studies WWWeb Sites WWWorth WWWatching The Office of Public Engagement BRIEFING ROOM “The White House provides timely and accurate information about the President's latest events and public statements. Here you'll find photos, video, and blogs, as well as proclamations, executive orders, and press releases.” ‐ http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing_room/ African Americans in Politics A Multimedia resource from The Schomburg Center for Research in 3 Issue 62 Black Culture, New York. “Before Barack Obama, there was Crispus Attucks, Frederick Douglass, the Massachusetts 54th Regiments, Mary McCleod Bethune, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and a host of other heroes and heroines of the African‐ American struggle for freedom and human dignity, fighting to make America and American Democracy real for all of its citizens” ‐ Curated by Schomburg director, Howard Dodson National Visionary Leadership • “Co-founded in 2001 by Camille O. Cosby, Ed.D. and Renee Poussaint, The National Visionary Leadership Project (NVLP), a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization, unites generations to create tomorrow's leaders by recording, preserving, and distributing through various media, the wisdom of extraordinary African American elders - Visionaries - who have shaped American history… All of this visionaryproject.org invaluable primary source material is accessible worldwide on the NVLP website, and permanently archived at the Library of Congress, allowing students, scholars and the public to gain a whole new understanding of this country's past, and the lessons to be learned from it. “ 4 Resources for American Studies Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/classroom.php Going by the tagline ‘The Web’s Most Accurate Political Analysis’, electoral guru, Larry Sabato’s site at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics offers a wealth of resources, articles and debates, as well as teaching tools for all aspects of the US electoral process. At the site notes, “Crystal Ball was created just as much for students as for political junkies and reporters” and it includes several lesson plans, such as the ‘Battle for Swing States’, which may have uses in the UK class or seminar room. Larry’s tweets can also be followed at http://twitter.com/larrysabato 5 Issue 62 Hathi Trust Digital Library “The HathiTrust Digital Library, a partnership among some of the nation's largest academic research libraries, has launched a new digital catalog search that delivers nearly 3 million records through an Internet browser. ‘We are committed to providing solutions for archiving, and vital support for research," said John Wilkin, HathiTrust executive director and associate university librarian at the University of Michigan. "This new service provides access to the collections of the nation's premier research libraries. It's another step in building a worldwide, highly accessible 21st-century digital library.’” www.hathitrust.org Cover Browser Explore ½ million pulp, comic and magazine covers sourced from across the internet under ‘fair use’ copyright (including Jet magazine) www.coverbrowser.com/ 6 Resources for American Studies Reading the “Negro Bible”: Online access to Jet and Ebony Donald Tait This article gives a very brief account of the rise to prominence of the black owned and run Johnson Publishing Company, with particular emphasis on its earlier years and specifically on the role played by its two most important publications, Ebony and Jet. The late Redd Foxx called Jet, ‘The Negro Bible,’ and a character in one of poet/playwright Maya Angelou's plays said that ‘if it wasn't in Jet, it didn't happen’. It then describes how runs of these two titles, and others from the same publishing house, are now available online from Google Book Search, before looking at some potential uses of these resources as primary source material for research. Some samples of the covers of issues of Jet and Ebony 7 Issue 62 As yet, there are few twentieth-century magazine archives freely available online (Time being a notable exception). By contrast, there is an increasing amount of newspaper content becoming digitised, much of it via Google News Archive Search1, and available free of charge. Yet perhaps even more so than newspapers, magazines can be hugely important tools for historical research, carrying as they do a range of content such as articles, reviews and advertisements which cumulatively allow unique insights into the cultural mores and attitudes of readership of any given title. Within the African American community, for example, titles like Ebony and Jet, from the Johnson Publishing Company have long been considered as one of the most important places where have African Americans have been able to see their lives, culture and beliefs reflected. Study of these titles can reveal the fascinating changes that occur over time in such beliefs and attitudes: to take one tiny example, in the light of the historic victory of Barack Obama in the 2008 US Presidential election, it is interesting to note that a Gallup poll reported in Jet, in 1969, noted 67% of Americans would vote for a black presidential candidate, up from 38% from a similar poll done in 1958. To understand how significant these magazines were for black Americans, it is necessary to look into their origins. The Johnson Publishing Company, started by John H. Johnson in Chicago in 1942 with a $500 loan from his mother, rose to become one of the most successful black-owned businesses in America. Today it is the world's largest African-American owned and operated publishing company, and has diversified into areas such as cosmetics, television production and fashion. It currently has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Detroit, London and Paris, a far cry from its humble beginnings with its first publication, Negro Digest, produced by Johnson himself in a second floor office in Chicago when he was working as editor 1 http://news.google.com/archivesearch 8 Resources for American Studies of the company newsletter for the black-owned Supreme Liberty Life Insurance. The timing for such a bold venture was right, coming as it did when black GIs were returning from fighting for “freedom” in World War Two to find they were less than free at home, and facing a climate of racial injustice and prejudice.