Digital Library Services

As we prepare to make a fresh start of new projects in 2009, we’re featuring a few New Year’s-related items from past collections in Iowa Digital Library, ranging from a Jan. 1 diary entry in 1864 to a presidential campaign video captured 144 years later.  

Thank you to all of the Libraries staff who have helped us make so much progress in 2008, and to everyone reading this blog for giving us a reason to do so.

Happy New Year!

–DLS staff

“A fresh start,” Jan. 1, 1941
Editorial Cartoons of Ding Darling Digital Collection

 “…Spent New Years Day in camp. Weather very cold. Ice sufficiently strong to bear a man’s weight. We have good reason to believe that the present year will wind up the Rebellion.”
George M. Shearer diary, 1864
Civil War Diaries Digital Collection

“The New Year of 1968 offers NAACP Branches another chance to tie national items into programs on the local and state levels which will deal with the problems faced by the people. The civil rights movement is by no means over…”
NAACP newsletters, Fort Madison Branch, Fort Madison, Iowa, 1968
African American Women in Iowa Digital Collection

Barack Obama: New Year’s Day in Des Moines
Presidential Campaign Videos Digital Collection

“To the best of Len’s recollection, he met Charis on New Year’s morning…”
Fruit of the Month, 1988
University of Iowa Press Digital Collection

“A happy new year,” 1912
Noble Photographs Digital Collection

Thanks to a $32,700 grant from the National Archives, DLS wil be working with the Libraries’ Preservation and Special Collections departments to digitize the microfilm edition of the Henry A. Wallace Papers.

Iowa native Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965) was a geneticist, author, economist, businessman, U.S. vice president, and third-party presidential candidate. A wartime V.P. under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Wallace had more involvement in administrative and foreign policy than any of his predecessors; according to the Senate Historical Office, he was a forerunner of the modern vice president, who now fill a role as the president’s executive assistant and international representative.

Wallace’s socially liberal ideals — he advocated universal government health care, an end to segregation, and cooperation with the Soviet Union — sometimes branded him as a crackpot, as shown in this editorial cartoon from our Ding Darling digital collection. But to the million citizens who voted for him during his unsuccessful 1948 bid for president as the Progressive Party’s candidate, this visionary politician was the best choice to lead the way in post-war America.

By putting Wallace’s correspondence and related papers online and full-text searchable, DLS is pleased to increase access to primary source material on this important and controversial figure.

–Jen Wolfe
Metadata Librarian, Digital Library Services

This Fall, DLS and Central Technical Services staff have been working on scanning and providing metadata for materials from the Libraries’ Special Collections Department related to the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, and the building of the Union Pacific Railroad.

The Civil War documents include diaries and letters written by soldiers and female aid workers describing their experiences on the war front –- most of them had never traveled out of their state before, and several of them died before reaching home. One set of correspondence is that between Myron Underwood, a young rural Iowa doctor sent to Vicksburg, Miss., with the 12th Regiment of the Iowa Infantry to serve as a surgeon’s assistant, and his wife Sophie, back in Iowa with their infant daughter. In a long letter sent to Sophie as Christmas nears and he feels keenly his separation from his wife and daughter, Dr. Underwood apologizes for the lack of polish and eloquence in his correspondence, which he attributes to what he assumes is its ephemeral nature:

“I should have written with the same care that I would, if I had known that they were to be published, and then it might have been worth the while of preserving them. And again, they might have been of interest to you in the future and a benefit to our little girl. And by which she could have studied my true character, and known who her father is if any accident should befall me. And further that I was a thoughtful man, and that he looked forward to her education with an intense desire; and every word that he penned was weighed carefully and as though all my soul was in what I have written.”

Check back next month to view similar artifacts when the Libraries launches this collection to coincide with the Lincoln Bicentennial.

–Christine Tade
Library Assistant, Central Technical Services