Down Under

New Reference Books Arrive in Special Collections!
 (How? We Don't Know.  Dieter Found Them on a Shelf.)

(Title Page)

(One of the many advertisements for Schlitz in the almanac.)

Schlitz Vest Pocket Spelling Gazetteer of the World.
Webster Pronouncing Dictionary including leading synonyms 27500 words, the world's up-to-date edition. 1895.

I guess we don't need to tell anyone what Schlitz is. Evidently, in 1895, many folks would still turn to it as good medicine although the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 may have put a damper on advertising some of these medical claims. 

I would describe this little 5 1/2 x 2 1/2," 190-page reference book as an almanac. The main section is a dictionary with bare bones definitions: (hockey = a game; holly is a plant). Long and short vowels are indicated for some words. After a gazette of the world's countries giving area, population, capitals, and names of rulers, the almanac includes miscellaneous tables. A list of legal holidays, for example, will inform you that if you lived in Montgomery, Selma, or Mobile in the 1890s, you probably wouldn't have to show up for work Shrove Tuesday or March 1. Cataloguers can double check this claim, but it appears that the only other library in the country which has this title is the Library of Congress for which a record was published in the NUC. A very rare book which offers a little bit of American marketing history.

For more information on the history of Schlitz, please visit http://klark.org/schlitz/history.php

(front cover)

(Back cover)

Velvet Joe's Almanac for 1918.

If you look closely you'll guess that Velvet Joe's was tobacco, and this 8" x 5," 48-page almanac was published by Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company. Its title page tells us that in addition to the calendar for the year, rising and setting of the sun and moon, weather forecasts, crop reports in true almanac style, we can learn the estimated losses in the most recent European war, how much income tax one had to pay under the radical new income tax laws of 1916 and 1917, automobile laws of all the states and - a little bit of sexism as well since we are given the proportions of the perfect woman based on the Venus of Milo graded for different heights, whereas only average heights and weights of men are offered! According to the bibliographic records, this was a serial although only one other edition was published in 1921. Eight libraries are listed for the serial records, 2 for the 1917 edition and only Indiana University for the 1921 edition.

For more information, please visit http://www.liggettgroup.com/pages/corporate/timeline.html

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/hartman/newsletter/vol7num1/liggett.html

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/hartman/index.html

Earlier this month, the libraries submitted a progress report on the Cornerstone project to the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries. The report covered the period from October 1, 2002, through March 31, 2003. NAAL will combine reports from the University of Alabama, Auburn University, and the Department of Archives & History into the statewide report to the funding agency, the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

During this period, we prepared a long-term digitization plan that focused on materials related to the history of Auburn University, the history of agriculture in Alabama, the Civil War, and the history of aviation. In all, the plan calls for the creation of approximately 60,000 digital images.

We decided to focus first on materials related to the history of Auburn University because of their direct relationship to the immediate goal of providing material on Alabama history to supplement the K-12 curriculum. Currently, we're digitizing minutes of the board of trustees, student handbooks, student newspapers, and catalogs dating from 1856-1947. On our website, this digital library will be introduced by well-illustrated period narratives on the history of Auburn University. Several graduate and undergraduate students have been hired with grant funds to work on this phase of the project.

Auburn University also served as the home base for two other grant-funded interns who wrote digitization plans for the Mobile County Archives and Tuskegee University. The Mobile County plan covers a variety of local government records that date to the French colonial settlement of that city. The Tuskegee plan focuses upon the large and collection of print materials related to Pan-African studies in the custody of that historically black institution. Tuskegee also has a major archival and manuscript collection, which we determined would require further arrangement and description before a useful digitization plan could be written. This spring we have one grant-funded graduate student who's preparing a digitization plan for the Birmingham Public Library, which has a rich collection of manuscripts, rare books, and maps related to Alabama history.

The libraries also coordinated digitization planning with two state-wide cultural projects. The first is an effort to produce an on-line encyclopedia of Alabama that may include materials digitized under the Cornerstone project. The second is an effort to produce an online literary map of Alabama. We have offered to host the literary map on the Cornerstone website and may digitize selected materials for use on that site.

Finally, we made significant additions of equipment to the digitization laboratory housed in the Draughon Library. With funds from the IMLS grant, the lab added a Snapserver for storing copies of images; two workstations equipped 11" x 17" flatbed scanners; and non-scanning workstations for a programmer and a graduate assistant. New Encompass software has been received and the hardware is on order. Grant-funded students working in the lab are at work on the Auburn University historical materials mentioned earlier. They have also scanned several hundred historic Alabama postcards that will be included on the Cornerstone website.

If you have questions regarding the Cornerstone project, please check with Beth Nicol, Sheri Downer, or Dwayne Cox.

This spring's library development newsletter will be devoted to the presidency of Dr. Ralph Brown Draughon, who held that position from 1947 until 1965. Of course, the Ralph Brown Draughon Library is named in his honor. The development newsletter is sent to all Auburn University faculty, as well as members of the Alumni Association's recognition societies. The latter groups consist of those who have made sizable financial contributions to the university. The newsletter includes a pledge card for those who wish to make contributions to the Auburn University Libraries. If you're interested in more information regarding the newsletter, please check with Dwayne Cox in Special Collections & Archives.