Free Access to Alexander Street’s Civil War Collections

To help mark the upcoming bicentennials of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Alexander Street is offering a month of free access to its Civil War collections. These include: The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries; American Civil War Research Database; and Illustrated Civil War Newspapers and Magazines. They are also including free access to tow databases that provide streaming audio for Civil War era songs and music. The trial is good through April 30, 2008. You can find links to these resources at: http://alexanderstreet.com/resources/civilwar.access.htm

For this trial, use the following user name and password:

username: american
password: bicentennial

UNH and the Open Content Alliance

As reported a while back, UNH through its membership in the Boston Library Consortium, is actively participating in the Open Content Alliance. This is an attempt to make materials that are no longer governed by copyright available full-text, with no restrictions. All volumes from UNH and the BLC are available through the Internet Archive.

We have sent several hundred volumes at this point and intend to send many more. Much of our emphasis is on New Hampshire and UNH related materials; clearly materials that will add to the collections of the BLC as a whole. As a good example of a collection of local interest, we have had the entire run of the New Hampshire Experiment Station Bulletins scanned. These provide a glimpse of the scientific work done at the University from its inception, but also reflect upon the agricultural and social history of the region. You can scan examples of the results here. For best result, I like viewing them in the pdf format — you can click on that option on the left side of the page for each title.

The BLC has scanned many UNH materials to date, so this is just an example. In the near future, these digital facsimiles will be available through links in our online catalog. So, stay tuned for future developments