The American Libraries Association (ALA) chose Connecticut History Online as the Digital Library of the Week, for the week of February 25th.  Following is the press release from ALA:

Connecticut History Online is a digital collection of over 15,000 digital primary sources, together with associated interpretive and educational material. Now in its 10th year, CHO is embarking on a collaboration with the Encyclopedia of Connecticut History Online to serve the needs of scholars, teachers and students, genealogists, and the general public. This new initiative builds upon a very successful collaboration of libraries and museums carried out in two IMLS National Leadership grant-funded phases (1999–2007) that focused on digital capture of historical artifacts, including photographs, maps, broadsides, oral histories, manuscripts, and oral histories. These document events, people, and places that are part of the fabric of Connecticut and American social, business, political, educational, cultural, and civic life. The four current CHO partners (the Connecticut Historical Society, Connecticut State Library, Mystic Seaport, and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center) represent three major communities that preserve and make accessible historical collections within the state of Connecticut. Their combined assets include book and periodical volumes, manuscript materials, photographs and graphics, oral histories, maps, artifacts, and broadsides.

Check out Connecticut History Online today!

The rich resources of the Archives & Special Collections, which encompass holdings as diverse as human rights, the alternative press, 20th century American poets and authors, and Connecticut’s history, are now easier than ever to discover online.

Our new online tool enables users to search, either by key word or subject, the inventories and detailed descriptions of over 600 collections housed here in the Center.

For example, a search of the word “ecology,” returns the papers of the Connecticut Citizens Action Group, the first state-based consumer interest group created in 1971 by Ralph Nader, the poem, “The Ecology of the Soul,” by Joel Oppenheimer, a poet affiliated with the experimental Black Mountain College, as well and the papers of Walter Landauer, a professor in animal genetics at UConn’s Experiment Station, best known for his research on chickens.

Delivering Chickens

The inventories reveal the strength and variety of our holdings which extend to railroad history, Connecticut business, labor and industry, ethnic heritage, immigration, politics, and social movements throughout the world.

Try out the new tool by visiting: http://doddcenter.uconn.edu

“Bailey looked and often acted like the traditional ward politician. Tall and rumpled with an ever-present cigar in his mouth, his glasses pushed up on his forehead and speaking in a hoarse confidential tone, he was at home in the smoke-filled rooms of convention hotels. He was an artist at balancing a ticket to conform to Connecticut’s ethnic composition. He worked hard at disguising the facts that he was the son of a well-to-do-physician, had been educated at Catholic University and Harvard Law School, and maintained a lucrative Hartford law practice. Yet in reality he was a new-style boss who combined mastery of parochial political detail with astute knowledge of the legislative process and enough national vision to become one of the members of President Kennedy’s inner circle of advisors.” (CT Heritage Gateway, entry by Herbert F. Janick, http://www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/ctsince1929/bailey.htm

The collection of the Democratic giant from Connecticut , John M. Bailey, is now available at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. Bailey worked for John F. Kennedy’s successful presidential campaign in 1960, and then went on to serve as chairman of the National Democratic Party from 1961-1968. The collection includes boxes of correspondence from the 1960s including letters with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, speeches at numerous conferences nationwide, as well as photographs, press releases, and travel schedules.

For more information please see:
http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/findaids/bailey/MSS20070002.html

An incredible collection of Spanish periodicals and newspapers from the Archives are now available online at http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/collections/spanwomen.htm. 

In the early 1970s, the Archives acquired this rich collection from the famous bibliophile, Juan Perez de Guzman y Boza, the Duque de T’ Serclaes, which reflects the complex history of Spain through its periodical and newspapers during most of the 19^th century.  Of great interest and research value is the wide selection of women magazines written by men to appeal to a female elite audience. The range of materials you can find in these literary and general interest magazines is limitless.  Full of things such as short historical stories, poems, good advice for both men and women about the proper behavior of ladies at any age, beautiful colored and engraved images with the latest news of Paris fashion, music sheets of polkas and other music specifically composed for the magazines, and patterns for needlework to name only a few. These magazines are an amazing window to understand the social dimensions of women in 19^th century Spain.

Because of their significance to international researchers unable to travel to the University, the Dodd Research Center has been digitizing many of the titles in the collection.  Nine titles, including Correo de las damas o poliantea instructiva, curiosa y agradable de literatura, and ciencias y artes published in Cadiz, Spain have been digitized with 12 or more titles to  be completed by the end of May, 2010. We welcome you to enjoy this unique and colorful collection.

For more information, contact Marisol Ramos
(860) 486-2734
marisol.ramos@uconn.edu