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New Collections in American Memory



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>