Word on the Street

Celebrate Women's History Month with Alexander Street!

March is Women's History Month in the United States, and in celebration we're offering free access to Women and Social Movements, International, our newest history collection! But access ends March 31st, so register now.

For more information about Women and Social Movements, International, or to request extended trial access, email [email protected].

Women and Social Movements, International is now live!

Our newest online collection, Women and Social Movements, International—1840 to Present, is now live. With more than 150,000 pages, drawn from over 300 sources, Women and Social Movements, International is a landmark collection that provides an unparalleled look at the ways that women's social movements shaped the events and attitudes that have defined modern life.

Women's international organizations have focused on issues related to peace, poverty, child labor, literacy, disease prevention, and global inequality. By exploring traditions of women's activism, we can reach a full understanding of modern society and history. Women and Social Movements, International provides an unparalleled survey of how women's struggles against gendered inequalities promoted their engagement with other issues over time and across cultures. Faced with resistance from national political parties and organizations in the 19th and 20th centuries, women created international organizations where they pioneered policies that were adopted by national and international governing bodies. For example:

• President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points built on resolutions adopted by the Women's Peace Conference at The Hague in 1915.
• Madeleine Z. Doty, correspondent for Good Housekeeping in Moscow during the Russian Revolution, shaped the policies of the League of Nations in the 1920s.
• Minerva Bernardino of the Dominican Republic helped launch the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Women and Social Movements, International brings a fresh understanding of the world we inherited from these women and their organizations with journals, manuscripts, letters, photographs, diaries, and ephemera; reports from different national committees (which facilitate comparison and multiple perspectives); and links to twenty thousand additional pages of valuable primary resources on the Web. Much of this material is still in copyright and previously-unpublished, and the collection is backed by a global editorial board of 130 leading scholars.

To request a free trial or price quote for your library, email [email protected].

Alexander Street in the blogosphere

photo © 2007 Declan Jewell | more info

If you don't have access to a library, the Andy Rowell Church Leadership Blog has a great roundup of ways to explore the works of Karl Barth. And if you want to check out the Digital Karl Barth Library, email [email protected] and we'll send you a username and password good for 30 days!

You also may have heard that earlier this month, James Fowler, the Alabama State Trooper who fatally shot peaceful protestor Jimmie Lee Jackson in 1965, was sentenced to a six-month prison sentence. The killing was part of the inspiration for the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and our friends over at Smithsonian Folkways offer two albums documenting these marches (which you can find in our Smithsonian Global Sound® collection, as well). "Freedom Songs: Selma, Alabama" features freedom songs sung by protestors and was recorded by Carl Benkert, one of the night watchmen during the watches (Mr. Benkert passed away just a little before Fowler's sentencing). The other, "WNEW's Story of Selma", is a radio broadcast documentary featuring Pete Seeger, len Chandler, and the Freedom Voices recalling their experiences at the march and singing freedom songs.

Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries updated

We've just added a new batch of material to Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries, the online collection created in partnership with the American Antiquarian Society! Along with an update that brings the Allen Johnson collection from 25,000 to nearly 49,000 pages, we've added 5,166 pages from four new collections, including:

• Ruth Henshaw Bascom Papers, 1789-1846
• Burr Family Papers, 1805-1836
• Anna Quincy Thaxter Cushing Papers, 1816-1918
• Waldo Family Papers, 1788-1830

Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries is available to libraries and educational institutions worldwide. For more information, including free trial and pricing requests, please email [email protected].

Women and Social Movements updated

The latest issue of Women and Social Movements in the U.S. is now live. Subscribers will find a wide range of new materials—document projects, document archives, book reviews, full-text sources, and News from the Archives. If you subscribe to the Scholar's Edition, you'll also find a new secondary essay relating to the publications of State and Local Commissions on the Status of Women.

The new document projects include:

• an exploration of the contributions of African American women to the civil rights movement in the twentieth century, by Professor Gail Murray
• a compelling view of the work of Catholic laywomen during, and just after, World War I to provide social services for immigrants in East St. Louis, IL, by Jeanne Petit

In the new document archive, Marcia Gallo offers a selection of issues from The Ladder, published by the Daughters of Bilitis between 1956 and 1972. In her introductory essay, Gallo discusses the founding and the evolution of the magazine and its place in the emerging lesbian and second-wave feminist movements in these years. The archive itself includes more than a thousand pages chosen to illuminate the changing approaches taken by the journal’s editors over time.

Subscribers to Women and Social Movements in the U.S. - Basic Edition can access all of the new material at http://wasm.alexanderstreet.com.

Subscribers to Women and Social Movements in the U.S. - Scholar's Edition can access all of the new material, including the secondary essay, at http://wass.alexanderstreet.com.

For more information, and to request a free trial or price quote for your institution, please contact [email protected].

Also, keep your eyes peeled for Women and Social Movments, International.

The premiere of Booklist Online Video Review

The inaugural issue of Booklist Online Video Review hit in-boxes today. Video Review is "a bimonthly digital newsletter featuring new reviews of videos for adults and youth. Booklist’s video coverage is an essential resource for public and school librarians . . ." The first issue of this free e-newsletter can be viewed here, and you'll want to be sure to subscribe.

If you've already read issue #1, you'll notice the advertisements for free access to Alexander Street's American History in Video. Our free access periods have been so popular that we've decided to do it one more time! Check Video Review for more details and start streaming today.

Using Civil War collections for genealogy research

Civil War buffs and historians love Alexander Street's online collections for their rare content and powerful search capabilities. But our Civil War collections are also a useful tool for genealogy research. Jirene's Genealogy Tips highlights a few of the ways you can find information on ancestors that served in The War Between The States.

National HBCU Week

This week has officially been designated National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week by President Obama. The proclamation is intended to raise awareness and support the efforts of the 105 HBCUs in the US. You can learn more by reading the official White House press release.

Today Alexander Street is attending the Howard University Faculty Open House, and all week we're offering free content that celebrates National HBCU Week. To see a video clip discussing Thurgood Marshall's education at Howard Law School under Charles Houston, and for future free content, visit our Facebook page and look for the Afternoon Snack.

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 [email protected].

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.