Word on the Street

The March on Washington

This Saturday marks the 47th anniversary of The March on Washington and Martin Luther King's legendary "I Have A Dream" speech. The March was organized to put pressure on Congress to pass civil rights legislation.

Below is newsreel coverage of The March on Washington from Universal Newsreels. Subscribers to American History in Video can find the video, along with its synchronized, scrolling transcript, here.

American History in Video continues to grow to 2,000 hours of important documentaries, newsreels, public affairs videos, and archival footage. For more information, and to request a free trial and price quote for your library, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

Scheduled maintenance on Saturday, August 28

On Saturday, August 28, 2010, we will be performing scheduled maintenance on all Alexander Street collections. While we do not expect any major service outages, access may be disrupted sporadically between the hours of 8 AM and 4 PM EDT / UTC-4.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. As always, we'll try to keep any periods of downtime to a minimum, but please plan accordingly.

If you have any questions prior to the scheduled maintenance, or if you experience problems after the times listed above, please contact Customer Support. If you are the technical contact at your library and would like to receive email notifications about future service interruptions, please sign up here.

Alexandria Library sit-in

If you're familiar with Alexander Street Press, you'll know that our headquarters is located in Alexandria, VA, just minutes down the road from the main branch of Alexandria Library. You'll also know that our mission for the last 10 years has been to make silent voices heard. Online collections like Black Thought and Culture, Black Women Writers, and Black Short Fiction and Folklore bring to light some of the most fascinating and overlooked contributions by African Americans.

It is only fitting that the first civil rights sit-in in a public facility in America took place right here in Alexandria. On August 21, 1939 Samuel Tucker organized the sit-in at Alexandria's "whites only"  public library. More details about the sit-in can be found on the Library History Buff Blog. Blogger Larry T. Nix also includes links to the Alexandria Black History Museum Web site, which has more information about Tucker and the sit-in.

In 2000, the City of Alexandria's newest elementary school was dedicated to Samuel Tucker. A brief biography and more information can be found on the school's Web site.

Celebrate Hawaii

On August 21, 1959 the Unites States officially welcomed its newest member—Hawaii. If your library subscribes to Smithsonian Global Sound® for Libraries you can celebrate the 51st anniversary with dozens of tracks of Hawaiian music. Below are 3 albums to enhance your luau and get your guests doing the hula.

Original Hawaiian Steel Guitar performed by Tony Ku & Tomomi Sugiura

Hawaiian Drum Dance Chants: Sounds of Power in Time performed by Tom Hiona

Musics of Hawai'i: Anthology of Hawaiian Music - Special Festival Edition

Smithsonian Global Sound® for Libraries is available to academic institutions and libraries worldwide. To request free trial access or a price quote for your library, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com. Library patrons should contact the electronic resources department at their local library, as this online collection is available to institutions only. For more information about Smithsonian Folkways, visit their Web site.

Possible service disruption

Due to scheduled maintenance at our data center, access to your Alexander Street collections may be disrupted between 11 PM EDT on Saturday, August 21 and 6 AM EDT on Sunday, August 22. Although we don't anticipate any noticeable downtime, we wanted to alert you to the potential. If you have any questions please contact support@alexanderstreet.com.

Head back to school with a free playlist

If you are a student, teacher, librarian, or faculty member preparing for another year of classes, why not head back to school with a free playlist from Alexander Street? Use the QR reader on your mobile device between now and October 15th to scan the QR code below. You'll then be able to enjoy a free streaming playlist on your iPhone or Droid while you plan for the new academic year.

You can also find a bonus QR code on the School Library Journal blog, which links to a free "Moon Landing" playlist.

Expanded partnership with NINES

In an ongoing effort to improve scholarly access to digital humanities resources, Alexander Street Press has partnered with The Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES) and its sister organization, 18thConnect: Eighteenth-Century Scholarship Online, to enable cross-search access to all relevant eighteenth- and nineteenth-century content from Alexander Street online collections, including, most recently, The Romantic Era Redefined.

In addition to The Romantic Era Redefined, other Alexander Street Press collections indexed in the NINES and 18thConnect networks include The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries, Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, and Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period.

For more information, please read the press release.

If you'd like to request free trial access to The Romantic Era Redefined, or a price quote for your library, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

Graphic novel news

On August 8th, Fantagraphics founder and president Gary Groth spoke at the Sydney Opera House. The program, called GRAPHIC, also featured Neil Gaimon, Kevin Smith, and others. You can learn more and download the program on the Sydney Opera House's Web site, and see photos and videos on the GRAPHIC Facebook page. In addition to publishing The Comics Journal, Gary Groth is an advisor on Alexander Street's Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels.

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If you haven't yet read Library Journal's graphic novel Q&A, you can find the full article here. In Q&A: Librarianship's Graphic Novel Experts, Martha Cornog talks with librarians who have recently published books on comics and graphic novels. They answer questions about being introduced to comics as kids, reading comics online, and the permeation of comics into popular culture.

Black Drama: Second Edition is complete

Over 80 new plays have been added to Black Drama: Second Edition, bringing this online collection to completion. A 2004 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, the collection now contains more than 1,460 plays written by authors from North America, the Caribbean, English-speaking Africa, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the plays in Black Drama: Second Edition are rare, and over 40% are previously unpublished.

Highlights of the latest content update include the unpublished works of:

• George Houston Bass (founder of the Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University)
• Mustapha Matura
• Paul Boakye
• Kia Corthron
• Gus Edwards
• J.E. Franklin
• Edgar White
• Charlayne Woodard
• Marion McClinton (renowned director of August Wilson's work)

Also included in this final release are plays by:

• Aime Cesaire
• Trevor Rhone
• Roderick Walcott (twin brother of Derek Walcott)
• Austin Bukenya
• Caryl Phillips
• Sterling Houston
• Wole Soyinka

Black Drama: Second Edition is available to libraries and academic institutions worldwide. For more information, including pricing and free trial requests, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

We're hiring

Looking to join our team? Alexander Street is looking for qualified candidates to fill a number of roles in various departments. See a complete list of openings here, and submit your résumé today.