Content
New Collections 
What’s in the lab now?
Focus on . . . Thanksgiving!
Students making a Difference . . .
TDNP: Hemphill County News, Bartlett Tribune now online
UNT Digital Collections 

Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Library and Hall of Fame

The Permian Basin Museum, located in Midland, Texas, contributed a rich sampling of photographs of West Texas boom towns, oil field camps, and ranching life from the late 1890’s through the 1950’s. Images of workers constructing oil rigs and pipelines in harsh winter weather and loading stacks of dynamite reveal the hard and dangerous work that went into building and maintaining oil wells. But along with the hard work came time for recreation as the photograph of the Cecil Bowers Cowboy Band above demonstrates. This collection provides a great snapshot of how the oil boom brought commerce and development to the West Texas Permian Basin.

Dallas Police Department photos of the Kennedy assassination now available on the Portal

Direct from the UNT News Release, November 2009 by Nancy Kolsti.

DENTON (UNT), Texas — A paperback copy of the novel “1984” was probably not an uncommon item in households in 1963, including the white, two-story home at 214 Neely St. in Dallas.

But because that home was the boarding house of Lee Harvey Oswald, George Orwell’s 1949 cautionary tale against totalitarianism was seized by Dallas Police Department officers as evidence on Nov. 22, 1963 — along with other items belonging to Oswald.

Photographs of these items and many other Dallas Police Department photos related to the investigation of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination are now available for public viewing on the Internet, thanks to the University of North Texas Libraries’ Portal to Texas History and the Dallas Municipal Archives.

The UNT Libraries’ Digital Projects Unit, which manages the portal, recently received a Rescuing Texas History grant from the Summerlee Foundation to digitize 404 images taken by the department during the week following Kennedy’s assassination. The Dallas Municipal Archives, a division of the City Secretary’s Office, possesses all of the original investigation files except for those that have been transferred permanently to the federal investigation collection held at the National Archives.

“We are delighted to be working with the Portal to Texas History to make the collections of the Dallas Municipal Archives more accessible, and look forward to a long relationship,” said City Secretary Deborah Watkins.

Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert noted that the images “document a tragic but historic moment in Dallas and American history. It’s critical that these important photographs not only be preserved, but be available to all for study and scholarship,” he said.

The black-and-white photographs are now located at http://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/JFKDP/browse and are easily searchable. They include the “sniper’s nest” in downtown Dallas’ Texas School Book Depository Building, where Oswald allegedly fired on Kennedy’s motorcade; the back and front yards of the boarding house at 214 Neely; Dealey Plaza; the intersection at Tenth Street and Patton Avenue where Oswald allegedly fatally shot Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippit; interiors of the Texas Theater, where Oswald was arrested by Dallas police; and the basement of Dallas City Hall, where Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963.

Dreanna Belden, coordinator of grants and development for the UNT Libraries, said that beginning in 2010, the documents that accompany the photos and the Dallas Police Department’s investigation will also be placed on the Portal to Texas History. These documents include homicide reports, newspaper clippings and correspondence, affidavits and witness statements.

“We hope to raise money to cover the completion of this project,” said Belden, who said that placing the photos and documents on the Portal to Texas History will provide the general public with the widest possible access to them.

Dr. Martin Halbert, dean of UNT Libraries called the Kennedy assassination “a critical moment in our collective cultural memory.”

“This tragic event still deeply resounds across our nation, and we at UNT are delighted to be providing public access to these historical materials,” he said.

The photos were previously digitized in 1992 by Wang Laboratories in Lowell, Mass., after the Dallas City Council passed a resolution ordering the release of all files, documents, papers, films, audio or any other evidence held by the Dallas Police Department or any city department or agency regarding the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby to the public and the media. The resolution, which also ordered that these materials be preserved, was largely in response to public interest following the December 1991 premiere of the film “JKF.”

Belden said that although the photos were placed online by the Dallas Municipal Archives after they were digitized by Wang Laboratories, “there was no way to search through them using a search engine, and the image quality was very poor, due to the equipment available at the time.”

“Major changes in technology have occurred in the past 17 years, and the difference in quality is astounding,” she said.

The Telegraph and Texas Register, 1835-1843

It was news that was fit to print for the weekly newspaper. On March 12, 1836, the Telegraph and Texas Register of San Felipe de Austin published the Declaration of Independence made by the Delegates of the People of Texas in General Convention at Washington more than a week earlier. The newspaper published the entire declaration noting “We present our readers, this week, with the unanimous declaration of independence, by the assembled delegatesof Texas…the important document was presented and adopted.” The same issue included a letter from Lieut. Col. Comm. W. Barrett Travis pleading to the President of the Convention to “hasten on reinforcements, ammunition and provisions to our aid, as soon as possible.” Facing the wrath of Santa Ana with a demand that he surrender, Travis writes “Their threats have had no influence on me, or my men, but to make all fight with desperation, and that high souled courage which characterizes the patriot, who is willing to die in defence of his country’s liberty and his own honor.” The newspaper provides a firsthand account of history in the making and provides a fascinating view of life during the nineteenth-century in Texas. Many thanks to our partners at the Center for American History at UT for working with us to provide access to this important newspaper.

LBJ Museum of San Marcos

“I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.” – Lyndon Johnson

A collection of over a thousand photographs documenting Lyndon Johnson and family at the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, Texas (his home from 1951-1973, Lady Bird’s until 2007) will be available in February. The photos cover major events, including historic diplomatic visits, the 1960 campaign of Kennedy and Johnson, birthday celebrations, President Johnson press conferences, national/state park dedications, and LBJ’s funeral ceremony. Noteworthy persons included in photos are Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Sam Rayburn, John F. Kennedy, Henry B. Gonzales, Hubert Humphrey, Pierre Salinger, Bill Moyers, and Johnson family members. This collection was donated to the museum by the family of Nortam Dietel, the late editor and publisher of the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio-Post.

Matthews Land & Cattle, Lambshead Ranch

Lambshead, one of Texas’ most historic cattle ranches,  is still owned and operated by the direct descendants of Judge J. A. and Sallie Reynolds Matthews. The Reynolds and Matthews families were pioneer ranchers and trail drivers who arrived in East Texas in the 1850’s and at the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, in 1866. The photographs, spanning over 100 years, document ranching history, ranching practices and community gatherings such as the famous Fort Griffin Fandangle. Images of historic ranch buildings, like the one above, are also featured, the oldest one being the Old Stone Ranch, built in 1855 which was the last pioneer outpost between forts.

University of Texas at San Antonio – HemisFair ’68

Working with the UTSA Archives and Special Collections, we’re digitizing 1,000 photographs of the 1968 HemisFair, “The Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas.” The images, photographs and slides document the fair – the only international exposition ever held in Texas – from the construction of buildings, to visits by important people such as Lyndon B. Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, John Connally, and Henry B. Gonzalez. From April  to October of 1968, over 6 million people visited the fair, which brought international attention to San Antonio and Texas.  The photos will be online starting this winter.

Focus on… Thanksgiving! As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. — John F. Kennedy 1943 Thanksgiving issue of the Tulia Herald George Dealey speaking at the Thanksgiving Service at the Hall of State, 1941 from Legacies Group at Aubrey Christian Church who started the Annual Thanksgiving Dinner, Private Collection of Bouncer Goin Thanksgiving postcard from 1908, Private Collection of Joe E. Haynes

Meet Josh Kasten, student assistant in the Digital Projects Unit since October 2009. Josh was born in Wisconsin, but grew up on a farm in Northeast Indiana. Josh is a military veteran, who served in the Army from 2000 – 2005.  After his training at various bases in the U.S. specializing in electronics, he served in Baghdad, Iraq from March 2004 – January 2005, mostly, “driving trucks on convoys and doing guard duty.”  He was hit by a mortar in October 2004, and his leg was injured. He came back to the US in January 2005 and was discharged in June 2005.

He is now a student at UNT working on a degree in history, and expects to graduate in May of 2010.  After graduation, he intends to do what he has always wanted to do — teach history at a high school and coach football.  He hopes to move, “out west, to the mountains.”

Josh says he has learned a lot about Texas while working in the Digital Projects Lab. One of his favorite projects has been the history reports done by students at Marfa High School.  Rather than being a collection of things on one topic, this project has a lot of variation with some interesting essays.

Josh finds it fascinating to see how sparsely populated pasture lands have turned into the metro areas of Texas in a matter of decades. He likes working with the primary historical documents. He hopes it will make history more interesting for users; he feels that rather than being told what happened by someone else, these collections give people the opportunity to,  “… see items firsthand and put the puzzle together themselves – the fun part of history.”

The Hemphill County News ran for almost 30 years, from March 1939 through July 1968. The sole owners of the newspaper were husband and wife, Othello and Elna Miller. He was the publisher and editor and she was in charge of the reporting and advertising. The Portal now has the newspaper online from 1939-1953.

The paper was published in the town of Canadian, Texas, the county seat of Hemphill County, located in the northeast section of the Texas panhandle. Canadian, Texas was, and still is, a ranching and farming community. It is also known as “Rodeo Town” since it was the first place in Texas to stage a commercial rodeo, back in 1888.

The Hemphill County News began in March 1939. The Millers were soon joined by Earl “Scoop” Clark as their reporter. For a couple of months in 1939 they became a semi-weekly paper with publications on Tuesday and Friday. 1940 saw the inclusion of syndicated news from Bell Syndicate and Western Newspaper Union. The Hemphill County News became part of the Panhandle Press Association in July 1939. By the mid-1940s and 1950s the newspaper was a combination of local-only advertising, syndicated columns, and local stories. Syndicated columns included: Star Dust – Stage, Screen and Radio News, The Hometown Reporter in Washington, Household Memos, The Washington Merry-Go-Round, The Fiction Corner, Around the House, Grassroots, The Bible Speaks, Sportscope, and comic strips. Locally written columns included: Happy Birthday, Local News, 10 Years Ago in the News, and the Classified Ads. It had something for everyone, claiming to be “The Only Paper With Complete Coverage in Both City and Country.”

The town of Bartlett straddles the border of both Williamson and Bell Counties, and settlers began to populate the area in the 1850s. When the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad made plans to lay tracks through the area in 1881, the citizenry decided to form a town. John T. Bartlett and J.E. Pietzsch donated land for the township, and by 1884, Bartlett could boast a population of 300, a post office, a gin, a hotel, a grocer, a meat market, four churches, and a school.

The Bartlett Tribune began publication in 1886, and served a vital role in the community by reporting on national, state, and local news, publishing obituaries, and creating a record of legal notices for the area. As in any community, the newspaper provided the most in-depth means of preserving the stories that formed the town and its citizens.

With partners at the Bartlett Activities Center and Historical Society of Bartlett, UNT created a plan to microfilm, digitize, and provide free online access to the Bartlett Tribune between 1902 – 1972. This project was made possible by a grant from U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act. Editor and owner of the Tribune-Progress, Gayle Bielss, graciously granted copyright permission for UNT to host this newspaper online.

Libraries Digital Projects Unit receives $631,720 grant 
The UNT Libraries have received a two-year grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to investigate collection development needs related to online government information.

Working with the Internet Archive, project investigators will research several methods of classifying materials from the 2008-09 End-of-Term Web Archive of the .gov and .mil domains. In addition, UNT will develop metrics for measuring units of selected materials in Web archives — allowing archived materials to be quantified in a way that is more familiar to libraries and university adminstrators. For more details on this project, please see the UNT News Service Story.

The CyberCemetery: where Federal Agencies go to die . . .
What happens when a federal agency ceases operations and closes its door? Since 1997, the UNT Libraries have been harvesting the websites of defunct goverment agencies, and making them permanently accessible to the public. Much of this information would have disappeared forever if UNT had not captured it. Due to our role in creating the CyberCemetery, and other vital government-related digital materials, the UNT Libraries exist as one of only ten Affiliated Archives of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and is the only university in the U.S. to hold that distinction with the U.S. Naval Academy and West Point.

Examples of some of the archived websites include the Commission to Strengthen Social Security, the National Drought Policy Commission Home, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and the United States Information Agency.

Columbia Accident Investigation Board	Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction	Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States

Content
New Portal! 
What’s in the lab now?
Focus on . . . Summer!
Making a Difference
TDNP: a new grant
UNT Digital Collections 

Designed with you in mind

After months of conducting user studies, planning, testing and retesting, we are happy to present the new Portal to Texas History. The new Portal contains the same interesting materials you’ve come to expect, but in a redesigned web site with easier to use navigation and searching. In the new Portal, you can:

• target Basic Searches by material type or item record type
• view brief or full records for each item
• see any image in six different sizes
• use enhanced zooming for maps and other large format items
• get a suggested citation for an item
• use the Share feature to send content to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or other social networking sites
• find Help in our extensive suite of help guides
• and much more…

Behind the scenes, the Portal content now resides in a more robust system that ensures that we will be able to support ever-increasing numbers of users, add many more collections, and periodically provide new enhancements. For example, later this year we plan to roll out faceted searching that will allow you to filter your search results by category and find related collections or subjects.

Calling all Genealogists!

Over the past year the IOGENE Project at the University of North Texas Libraries has been working with genealogical societies and individual family history researchers in northeast Texas to understand how they use the Portal to Texas History. Their input led to several major enhancements in the new Portal. The redesigned Portal will help genealogists: 

• Discover anything from an ancestor’s picture to
  a rare historical map.
• Explore resources for a specific Texas county.
• Optimize searches using a Help guide for Genealogical Materials.

We are particularly interested in feedback from people researching their Texas ancestors.
A brief survey is accessible from the footer of most pages in the Portal. Please take a few minutes to complete the brief survey about your experience!

Abilene Photograph Collection

The Lab is now in the process of digitizing the Abilene Photograph Collection consisting of 10,000 4 inch x 5 inch black and white negatives dating from the early twentieth century to the present. The collection has a delightful assortment of images of community members, homes, businesses, churches and ranches. The collection details Abilene’s rich history, capturing a multitude of public events in Abilene and surrounding areas as do these two portraits from Abilene’s early years.

The collection is owned by Hardin-Simmons University and housed in the Richardson Research Center of the Southwest in HSU’s Richardson Library. Developing the collection was a community project with McMurry University and Hardin-Simmons taking the lead role. 

Focus on… Summer! Enjoying the pool. University of North Texas Libraries collection, 2006. Getting Ready for Old Settlers Barbeque, Childress County Heritage Museum Camp Wildurr on Village Creek in Hardin, First Christian Church, Port Arthur Glen Lake Camp, Archives of the Central Texas Conference United Methodist Church

Meet Jeremy Moore, Manager of the Digital Projects Lab, who organizes and oversees all the projects in the lab. He assigns projects to student assistants and maintains the equipment used for digitizing historic and contemporary content that is put into the Portal to Texas History and into the UNT Digital Collections. Jeremy began working in the lab as a student assistant in March 2005 and became the lab manager in February 2007.

Jeremy hails from Springfield, IL; Charlottesville, VA; and Lake Dallas, TX. He is currently working on an MFA in Photography and an MA in Art History. He expects to graduate in 2011. He likes the facilities and scope of a university with 35+K students, but with a small college feel.

Due to his knowledge of photography and photographic processes, Jeremy is quite helpful when others need help dating photographs. He gives an educated assessment of dates based on stamps, brands, or logos on the prints. He has provided expert guidance regarding handling and scanning of glass plate negatives. Jeremy said this job has taught him a lot about managing people. He began with only four student assistants and now has over sixteen. He said that the “students never cease to amaze me with goofs and …great insights that have improved our output in the lab.”

Outside the lab, Jeremy is serious about his photography. Most of his work is landscape-based using a Chamonix 4×5 camera. His artist statement describes his work as, “find[ing] beauty in the chaos of everyday life. He distills the world around him into images that existed for a single moment. [His subjects have] an acute sense of aesthetic form and geometric order.” To view his work take a look at Jeremy’s website. By the way, he has a show (Road Trip: Denton, TX to Las Vegas, NV) up at the Union Gallery at the University of North Texas Union through July 29, 2009.

Direct from the UNT News Release, July 2009 written by Nancy Kolsti

UNT receives additional funds to digitize historical Texas newspapersDENTON (UNT), Texas — The front page of the Sept. 10, 1900, issue of the Houston Daily Post contained an eyewitness account from a Houston businessman of “the great disaster that had befallen the nearby city.” In the account, the newspaper reported that “at least 1,000 people” had been drowned, killed or missing.

Texans can now log onto the Internet to read this historic source of information about the hurricane that destroyed Galveston on Sept. 8-9, 1900 — and ultimately killed more than 6,000 people, thanks to the University of North Texas Libraries’ Digital Projects Unit.

The UNT Libraries is one of 22 state partners, and the only partner from Texas, to receive National Endowment for the Humanities funding to digitize newspapers from the late 1800s and early 1900s for the National Digital Newspaper Program, “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.”The National Digital Newspaper Program, or NDNP, is a long-term effort from NEH and the Library of Congress to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with select digitization of historic papers. NDNP will create a national digital resource of historically significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 in all 50 states and U.S. territories.

The UNT Libraries first received a two-year $397,552 grant from NEH in 2007, which allowed the Digital Projects Unit to digitize 108,000 pages of newspapers published in Texas. In addition to pages of the Houston Daily Post, which was established in 1885 and ceased publishing in 1995, the unit digitized pages of:

• the Brownsville Daily Herald
• the Jefferson Jimplecute
• the Palestine Daily Herald
• the Jewish Herald, now published in Houston as the Jewish Herald-Voice;
• and the defunct Fort Worth Gazette, which was also published as the Fort Worth Weekly Gazette and the Fort Worth Daily Gazette.

The earliest pages of these newspapers date to 1883, and the latest to 1910.

All of the pages are now available on the Chronicling America web site and will be placed by the end of the summer on the UNT Libraries’ Portal to Texas History, which provides students and others with a digital gateway to collections in Texas libraries, museums, archives, historical societies and private collections.

The UNT Libraries recently received an additional two-year grant of $399,790 to expand its digitization of historic Texas newspapers, with pages from as early as 1860 and as late as 1922 digitized, said Cathy Hartman, the UNT Libraries’ assistant dean for digital and information technologies.

In addition to providing those interested in Texas history with local perspectives of national news stories, such as the 1900 Galveston hurricane and World War I, Hartman said the 19th- and early 20th-century newspapers included human interest stories.

“They covered things that newspapers don’t cover any more, such as whose relatives came by for tea,” Hartman said. “That gives us a glimpse into what life was like in that community. The advertising is interesting as well.”

Dreanna Belden, coordinator of grants and development for the UNT Libraries, said the style of reporting in these newspapers is also interesting.

“You read stories about murders and crimes, and they were so graphically written,” she said.

Belden said a committee of scholars will decide the next round of Texas newspapers that will be digitized. These papers are on microfilm at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas Tech University and other locations throughout Texas.

The UNT Libraries are also are a partner with the Oklahoma Historical Society, which received a $307,000 grant from NEH to make 100,000 pages of historical Oklahoma newspapers available to the National Digital Newspaper Project. The Digital Projects Unit will provide the technical expertise for the OHS, which has 85 percent of Oklahoma newspapers ever published on microfilm, Belden said.

“In 1844, the Cherokees published the Cherokee Advocate, which was the first newspaper in what is now Oklahoma,” she said. “Three newspapers existed in Indian Territory prior to the Civil War, related either to missions or tribal government, and 28 newspapers appeared between the war and 1889, the opening of the Unassigned Lands in the state to settlers. For the first time, these newspapers will be made available to the general public.”

A-Z Digitization Project

The A-to-Z Digitization Project encompasses all pre-1960 government documents selected by the UNT Libraries Government Documents Department for retro-cataloging purposes.  We are digitizing them alphabetically, starting with the call letter A, which includes agricultural documents, such as the Farmers’ Bulletin published by the USDA since 1889. These bulletins provide a snapshot of farming and the American household before 1960. For instance, some may chuckle at the bulletin titled “Chinchilla Raising” but Chinchilla fur was a popular fashion item in 1950. Topics range from “Rammed Earth Walls for building” to “Chrysanthemums for the home.” The bulletin “Potatoes in popular ways” published in 1944 describes the nutritional benefits of potatoes and provides various recipes, possibly to help American households add variety to their rations during World War II.

Help us spread the word and please forward this newsletter to anyone you think will be interested.

Content
New Collections 
What’s in the lab now?
Focus on . . . Spring!
Making a Difference with Students
TDNP: a new grant
UNT Digital Collections 

Cattle Raisers Museum

“Sometimes you get and sometimes you get got.”

The Cattle Raisers Association of Texas is the oldest and largest organization of its kind in the U.S., and the museum partnered with us to allow access to thousands of photographs that document the signficance of Texas and the Southwest’s ranching heritage. The images include portraits of leading Texas ranches and ranchers, such as the S.M.S, Waggoner and Four Sixes ranch.The collection provides an intimate view of ranching life, whether through photographs of cowboys in action herding and branding cattle or at rest as they gather around the campfire. You’ll also see images of an assortment of cattle breeds, such as Angus, Brangus, Beefalo, Blond d’Aquitaine, the first Simmental to enter the United States and portraits of champion bulls and cows covering several decades.

Native American treaties and a letter collection from the Oklahoma Historical Society 

The Oklahoma Historical Society partnered with us to provide access to some Texas related materials held in their archives, which include two handwritten documents and treaties relating to the Cherokee and Caddo Indians and the letter collection of I.G. Vore, an Indian Agent in Oklahoma. Many of the letters in the Vore collection discuss the affairs of the Texas Cherokee Indians in his jurisdiction.

The Community Bulletin 
The Community Bulletin was a weekly Abilene area newspaper that focused on African American issues and included reports on church and community events, civil rights, political races, educational changes, and the job market. Another regular feature highlighted famous African Americans in history such as John Mercer Langston, Walter Francis White, and George P. Bridgetower.

Published from 1967-1968 this bulletin captured a snapshot of American life during a tumultuos time. Editorial features focus on poverty, riots, taxes, and race issues.

Early Republic of Texas Session Laws
If you’re a fan of Gammel’s Laws of Texas, then you are bound to be excited about our latest project sponsored by the Texas Historical Foundation. We are digitizing and will soon provide online access to nine volumes documenting early Texas law:

• Laws of the republic of Texas : in two volumes. Houston : Printed at the office of the Telegraph, Volume 1. 1838
• Laws of the republic of Texas : in two volumes. Houston : Printed at the office of the Telegraph, Volume 2. 1838
• Laws of the Republic of Texas : volume third. Houston : National Banner Press 1838
• Ordinances and decrees of the consultation, provisional government of Texas, and the convention, which assembled at Washington March 1, 1836; published in Houston : National Banner Office 1838
• Translation of the laws, orders and contracts on colonization : from January 1821 up to 1829 in virtue of which Col. Stephen F. Austin introduced and settled foreign emigrants in Texas : with an explanatory introduction. Translated by S.F. Austin and S.M. Williams. Includes laws of Mexico and of the state of Coahuila and Texas. Columbia : Reprinted by Borden & Moore, Public Printers 1837
• Laws of the Republic of Texas: passed at the first session of the Third Congress: in one volume 1839
• Laws of the Sixth Congress of the Republic of Texas 1842
• Laws of the Eighth Congress of the Republic of Texas 1844
• Laws of the Ninth Congress of the Republic of Texas 1845

Many Thanks to the Texas Historical Foundation for sponsoring this project. The volumes will be accessible online by the end of January.

Rescuing Texas History: Dallas Municipal Archives and the Dallas Police Department’s photos of the JFK Assassination Investigation

For the 2009 Rescuing Texas History grants this year we are working with some very exciting collections that you’ll be hearing about a lot throughout the year! Currently we are digitizing over 400 photographs from the Dallas Municipal Archives that are from the Dallas Police Department’s investigative file of the JFK assassination. The images meticulously document the crime scenes, people, and places associated with this nationally significant tragedy, and will prove to be of great interest to researchers and conspiracy buffs.Another collection of photographs from the City of Dallas Municipal Archives will feature the development of Love Field from 1918 to the late twentieth century.

We are also digitizing 1,000 photographs from the University of Texas San Antonio of the HemisFair ’68, which was held in San Antonio, April 6 through October 6, 1968. It was the first officially designated international exposition held in the Southwest.  The collection includes aerial photographs of the exposition, colorful images of the pavilions representing over thirty nations, and people and events during the Fair. We are also digitizing a special family collection. It consists of poignant personal letters from an eighteen-year old World War II sailor writing home to his family in Port Arthur about his experiences aboard the USS Kassan Bay in the South Pacific, including a heart wrenching moment when he meets the eyes of a Japanese pilot being gunned down.  We continue to digitize photographs from a number of ranches, such as the Lambshead Ranch belonging to the Matthews Land and Cattle Company,  J.D Mitchell’s ranch in Calhoun county and over a thousand photographs of Lyndon B. Johnson’s ranch from 1950-1970. Collections continue to arrive in the Digital Projects lab, so stay tuned….

Focus on… Spring! Spring has sprung, and the bluebonnets are in bloom. Spring is about flowers and the beauty of nature. Two girls holding vines of flowers, Private Collection of Charles R. Delphenis An Easter Egg Hunt at the Davison home in 1913, Moore Memorial Public Library A poem, “Spring in Texas”, Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine, April 1965 Our Egg-cellent Army, Private Collection of Joe E. Haynes

Meet Charles “Vale” Fitzpatrick, Graduate Library Assistant, who works on content and curriculum development, including the Portal’s Primary Source Adventures and other services for educators. He hopes his work will enhance Texas’ history lessons by creating engaging, interactive learning experiences. He also hopes that these Primary Source Adventures will ease educator’s workload.

Vale’s hometown is Waco, Texas. Currently, he is a doctoral candidate at UNT specializing in Texas History, with minor specializations in Mexican-American Studies, Local History, and Military History. He has worked in the Digital Projects Lab since the summer of 2005. He expects to graduate in either winter 2009 or spring 2010.  After graduation, he intends to seek a teaching position at the university level or in a corporate research department.

Vale enjoys the camaraderie in the Digital Projects Unit along with the interesting projects he works on. He says, “I am always learning something new either on the history side or the library/technology side, all that makes me a lucky individual who enjoys his job and the people I work with.”

His favorite Primary Source Adventure he has worked on was, “The Galveston 1900: Storm of the Century”. Because this project combined maps, images, first person accounts, and an introduction capturing the storm’s historical context, it produced a product that was as interesting to create as it is present in the classroom.

Working on his PhD. is full-time work so Vale is often seen in the lab late at night as he faithfully continues this important work for educators.

Direct from the UNT News Release written by Nancy Kolsti:

Founded in 1881 when the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway laid tracks on the border of Williamson and Bell Counties, the town of Bartlett, Texas, prospered in the early 20th century as a shipping point for grain, livestock and produce. The Bartlett Tribune, a weekly newspaper, provided lively coverage of the town, which reached a peak population of 2,200 in 1914 and had three banks, three cotton gins, a meat market and its own railway company, the Bartlett Western.

The University of North Texas Libraries will microfilm, digitize and provide free online access to issues of the Bartlett Tribune, now called the Tribune-Progress. The UNT Libraries received a $60,403 Library Cooperation Grant from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to place issues of the Tribune that were published between 1902 and 1978 on UNT’s Portal to Texas History. The portal, administered by the UNT Libraries’ Digital Projects Unit, provides students and others with a digital gateway to collections in Texas libraries, museums, archives, historical societies and private collections. The portal contains maps, books, manuscripts, diaries, photographs and letters. Library Cooperation Grants promote the development of public and private partnerships between libraries and other agencies and community-based organizations. The UNT Libraries will work with the Bartlett Activities Center and the Historical Society of Bartlett to digitize the newspapers during the project, called “The Bartlett Tribune: Seventy-seven Years of Local History.”

Located in the area of Texas known as the Blackland Prairie, Bartlett today has about 1,700 residents, according to the 2005 census. The population began to decline during the 1930s because of the Great Depression and the closing of numerous businesses, including the Bartlett Western. The population reached a low of fewer than 1,450 in 1990.

Dreanna Belden, coordinator of grants and development for the UNT Libraries, said the libraries applied for a grant to digitize the Bartlett Tribune because the newspaper has significance for Williamson and Bell Counties.

“It documents the agricultural development of Texas and preserves the history of small town America,” she said. “The story of transition from an agrarian society to an information society cannot be perceived without understanding the roots of small towns such as Bartlett, and there is no better basis for fathoming this shift than the local newspaper that documents everyday life, as well as regional perceptions of state and national news stories.”     

Dan Carper, an active member of the Bartlett Activities Center, helped to write the grant. He said the desire to digitize the newspapers is much more than preserving historical data.

“There’s a great deal of history in those Bartlett papers,” said Carper, who lived in Bartlett as a child but now lives in Austin. “On the surface, this project is about preserving important historical data. Those of us who grew up in the heart of the Blackland Prairie lived in the midst of that history. And we do have a strong emotional attachment to our memories of Bartlett.”

He added, however, that the project “is about those who will find long-forgotten facts about their own people.”

“It is about those who will learn about Blackland Prairie events and conditions they cannot find anywhere else. It is about history buffs, historians, educators, students, researchers, authors and the just plain curious. It is about generations and tomorrows,” Carper said. “We at the Bartlett Activities Center are proud to be part of this project, and grateful to those who have made this possible.”
Cathy Hartman, the UNT Libraries’ assistant dean for digital and information technologies, said working with small communities to digitize their historical newspapers and make them available online “is a great pleasure for the Portal to Texas History team.”

“Reading the articles that appeared in the Bartlett paper 50 to 100 years ago is almost as interesting as working with Dan Carper and hearing his stories about growing up in Bartlett,” she said.

This project is made possible by a grant from U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act.

 The UNT Libraries previously received a TexTreasures grant from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to digitize and place newspapers published in Texas between 1829 and 1861 on the Portal to Texas History. These newspapers are currently the property of the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

The World War I and World War II Poster Collections
The Government Documents Department includes in its online collections nearly 500 original World War I and World War II posters. The World War Iposters include some from our French allies, while the World War II group consists primarily of American home front posters.

War bonds, rationing, enlistment, security, and morale are all topics featured by these artworks. The collection includes posters by such famous artists as Norman Rockwell, Theodore Geisel a.k.a Dr. Seuss, and Boris Artzybasheff.

Help us spread the word and please forward this newsletter to anyone you think will be interested.

Content
New Collections 
What’s in the lab now?
What Ike srought
Focus on . . . postcards!
Making a difference with students
Exploring land
A new grant: Rescuing Texas History
TDNP: Brownsville Daily Herald
UNT Digital Collections 

Marfa Public Library and West Texas history

One digitization project now underway in the lab is from the Marfa Public Library. We have four boxes filled with folders containing research papers and reports written by high school history students between 1961 and 1989. These student reports tell the history of the West Texas area with numerous photographs accompanying them. Featured reports include papers about the “Raid on the Brite Ranch,” the “U.S. Border Patrol,” wildlife in the area, and in-depth stories from families and individuals of white, Hispanic, and Native American descent. The photos, some from as far back as the 1860s, depict families, weddings, Fort Davis, petroglyphs, the landscape in and around Big Bend, Bloy camp meetings, cowboys, homes, ranches, and businesses in the area. This collection shows a strong people that are proud of their heritage and land.

The material we now have comprises about 15-20% of the total collection held in the Marfa Public Library.  Two of the four boxes we have in the lab are now available online. With the Marfa Public Library, we are currently looking for funding to continue work with this fascinating collection that tells the history of West Texas.

Shown at the upper right is an image of the ministers at Bloys Camp Meeting, where people in West Texas have been meeting near Fort Davis for an annual campout with religious services since 1890. On the left is an image of Capote Falls near Marfa. The photo on the lower right was taken at the 1918 wedding of Encarnacion and Jose Chavez.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Fort Worth 
The Portal to Texas History and the archives of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Fort Worth have worked together to add 952 photographic images that document the history of their company, as well as the thousands of women who built B-24 Liberators at the Mile Long Hangar, formerly operated by Consolidated Aircraft Corporation. During World War II, these women helped to make the Liberator the most produced U.S. military plane in U.S. history, with over 3,000 produced in Fort Worth alone.

These wonderful images document the tremendous service these women gave to their country in its time of need. In addition to the hundreds of images of riveting, drilling, and assembling, many WWII generals, other military brass, politicians, and celebrities came to tour the facility during this time, and also for later events at General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin. Included in those photos are Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ladybird Johnson, Amon Carter, Ben E. Keith, Gary Cooper, Charles A. Lindbergh, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and Chuck Yeager. And for people who love airplanes, many different types of aircraft are also pictured: B-24s, B-32s, B-36s, B-52s, B-57s, B-58s, F-102s, F-106s, F-111s, RB-36, XB-36, XB-36H, XC-99, YB-60, and YC-131C.

The images in this article show Betty Moore on the upper right standing at a piece of machinery; and on the upper left Helen Perkins is painting a star on a B-24. 

Heritage magazine
Heritage magazine is a publication of the Texas Historical Foundation, which since 1954, has published stories of Texas history and people while helping to fund projects that save Texas buildings and culture. We’ve just begun a projectwith the Texas Historical Foundation to provide online access to 95 issues of their publication, Heritage magazine.

Heritage magazine features wonderful articles such as “Spanning Texas,” which discusses the significance of the over 50,000 historic bridges in Texas, telling the stories of the people and towns where they are located; “Black Cowboys and Ranching in Texas” relates the significant place that African-American cowboys hold in Texas ranching history; and “BIG Business in the Lone Star State” focuses on businesses such as HEB, Justin Boots, Dr. Pepper, and Marshall Pottery. We are very excited about providing access to this excellent publication which should be online at the Portal by the end of January 2009.

Cattle Raisers Museum
Work is continuing on the extensive collections of the Cattle Raisers Museum. While they are awaiting the completion of their new home at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, we’ve partnered with them to digitize photographs which detail the importance and significance of Texas and the Southwest’s rich ranching heritage.

We were so sad to hear about the catastrophic losses that severely damaged the building and collections of one of our partners – the Heritage House Museum in Orange, Texas. After substantial flooding, the collections are warped, and the building sustained so much structural damage that museum staff have not been cleared to enter it.. More than three feet of water swept through the building, damaging photographs, artifacts, and documents. Mold is now growing rampantly throughout the building.

The only silver lining from this devastating loss is that last year we digitized over 1,700 of the museum’s historic photos, saving them from total loss. The originals may be gone, but at least the museum can reprint these images from the high quality master preservation images that were captured at UNT during the project. The vulnerability of the Texas coast is a reality, but thanks to technology all is not lost. Heritage House Museum’s online collections date from 1858 to 1995.

If you are interested in learning more about the status of cultural heritage institutions in the Gulf Coast region and whether they have damage, several professional associations are posting updates: the Texas Association of Museums; the Texas Library Association; and the Society of Southwest Archivists.

Focus on… postcards! Some things never go out of style, and old postcards are as irresistible today as they were in yesteryear. Take a stroll down memory lane. El Capitan Hotel, Van Horn, Clark Hotel Museum Spring Street, Palestine, c. 1909, Anderson County Historical Commission Lake Pinto, Mineral Wells, Dallas Historical Society Fluff Cat in a Handbag, c. 1908, from the Private Collection of Joe E. Haynes

Leah’s in the Lab! Leah Eggers is an undergraduate student who is majoring in Computer Science. She says, “I started out as a music major, which is why I’m at UNT. I love the small-towniness of Denton and of course I love all the friendships I’ve built.” Leah’s hometown is Marietta, Georgia.

Leah’s been working in the lab for over two years, and plans to stay until she graduates in May of 2009. Working in the Digital Projects Lab has been a good experience for her, “I really enjoy it!! I’ve learned a lot about Photoshop and a lot about Texas. I like the old pictures of Denton. It’s changed much less than you’d expect.”

Leah adds, “When I was in first grade, I wanted to be a librarian. Obviously, that goal changed, but here I am now, working in a Library! I’ve always thought that was sort of funny. After all, how many first graders want to be a librarian?” 

Recently, we’ve heard from a lot of folks in the oil industry who are using the Portal for their research. Genealogists and oil researchers have one thing in common – the Portal is a great place to look for the answers you need. We have a lot of information about land grants, from a handwritten ledger of Conditional Land Grants for Washington Countydated 1841, to individual land grants dating from 1833 to 1878. We have some plat maps and soil survey maps, in addition to a 1902-1913 Lot and Block Book of Texas City, Galveston County.

If you like maps, we have over five hundred online, dating from 1597 to 1971. The map to the left is a Bird’s Eye View of Wolfe City from 1891, and above is an 1875 San Antonio Plat map that documents the northern portion of the city surrounding the public square and bounded by the San Pedro Creek on the west. In the Portal you can also find a plethora of railroading maps. Did you know that a first class ticket from Hannibal, Missouri, to Houston cost $34.70 in 1877? In present day dollars, the same ticket would cost you $668.08, just proving that travel is never cheap.

The Summerlee Foundation of Dallas recently awarded the UNT Libraries funding for the third installment of the popular Rescuing Texas History program. Due to the success of previous Rescuing Texas History projects, we have added materials from twenty-eight collaborative partners, and in total have digitally preserved and provided free public access to 11,115 historic images. The images created through this funding have been viewed over 2,600,000 times, by people all over the world who are interested in Texas history.

Please help us pass along the word about this opportunity, or apply yourself. These digitization mini-grants are available to libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, and other groups which hold local history materials. The deadline for application is December 15, 2008, and scanning will begin in 2009.

With the Rescuing Texas History program, we can continue to provide historical materials online that are making a difference in people’s lives. Educators, historians, and everyday people are finding answers and making connections to the past due to the generous support of the Summerlee Foundation.

The Library of Congress’s Chronicling America site now hosts editions of the Daily Herald of Brownsville, Texas from July 1892 to December 1896.  This is the first batch of Texas newspapers to be loaded onto the Chronicling America site.  You can browse the newspapers or search through them.

The Portal to Texas History team plans to upload this paper and other Texas titles into the Portal to Texas History starting in Spring of 2009. Learn more about upcoming titles at the Texas Digital Newspaper Program website.

The UNT College of Music Program Books from 1988-2007
Every year, the College of Music compiles all of the performance programs into volumes that document the musicians and music presented during the year. All of UNT’s College of Music programs dating from 1988 to 2007 are now online.

The College of Music is internationally renowned for its jazz studies program, and is highly acclaimed for its instrumental and vocal ensembles, keyboard, composition and scholarly programs, as well as its teacher training.

Help us spread the word and please forward this newsletter to anyone you think will be interested.

Content
New Collections 
What’s in the lab now?
Focus on . . .Rodeo Pictures!
Making a Difference with Students
NEH honor: EDSITEment
A talk with historian Stuart Reid
TDNP: a new grant
UNT Digital Collections 

Legacies: a History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas

Legacies is a biannual publication devoted to the rich history of Dallas and North Central Texas as a way to examine the many local historical legacies—social , ethnic, cultural, political—which have shaped the modern city of Dallas and the region around it. Currently, Legacies is a joint publication of Dallas Heritage Village, the Dallas Historical Society, the Old Red Museum, and the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. This new collection to the Portal gives our visitors access to 38 issues of this brilliant history journal featuring the spring 1989 through fall 2007 issues.

Each issue, comprised of 40 – 70 pages, has its own “focus”. Examples of these include: Architecture in Dallas, Newspapers and Radio in Dallas, Theater in Dallas, George Bannerman Dealey, Dallas in the 1960s, Women Who Made a Difference, Dallas Lost & Found: Hidden Treasures and Forgotten Stories , Dallas Pioneers, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Inside each issue the reader will find historic photos and maps, remarkable stories and book reviews. The Portal includes each issue in its entirety, which can be viewed with our page-turning feature.

Shown are two issues’ covers; One from fall 2006 focusing on the assassination of JFK, and the other with the iconic Dallas Pegasus, from fall 1999 focusing on triumph over adversity.

José L. Castillo Photograph Collection 
The Portal to Texas History and the UNT Archives have added 1104photographic images by José L. Castillo, a Katie award-winning correspondent for the international EFE News Service. This archive of photographs, taken between July 2004 and July 2006, was donated to the UNT Archives in March 2007. It is the first entirely digital photo collection in the UNT Archives.

These splendid, colorful images depict events in the Latino community, including: the 350,000-strong march against the HR4437 immigration bill in Dallas in April 2006, Hispanic community and political leaders, festivals, Latino soccer leagues and other gatherings in the North Texas area. Featured subjects include: Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief, former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa and former LULAC President Hector Flores.

The Images in this article show Hector Flores, the Dallas Farmers Market, and the Mega March on April 9, 2006 in Dallas. When the project is completed, over 3,000 images from Castillo will be online at the Portal.

City of Clarendon Records

Clarendon, a small town in the Texas panhandle, recently received a big historical boost. The Portal team recently uploaded thirteen historical ledgers that document the development and history of the town from 1901 to 2003. The ledgers contain pages with handwritten text, typewritten text, newspaper clippings and pages printed from electronic documents. The types of information contained in them cover:

• minutes from Clarendon Town Council meetings
• minutes from Clarendon City Commissioners meetings
• minutes from Clarendon Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors meetings
• ordinances proposed and passed by the City of Clarendon
• papers for the incorporation of the Town of Clarendon
• documentation filed in the Office of the County Court for Donley County

Some interesting tidbits found in these ledgers include an application to open a telephone exchange and electric power plant in Clarendon in 1902; a citizen asking the Chamber of Commerce to help the city’s baseball team hire a “pitcher who is able to deliver the goods…and pay him real money… to get a crowd out to the games” in July 1920; City of Clarendon meetings about telephone rates, carnivals located within 200 feet of residences, the establishment of a “Permanent Fireman”,  and improvements for the band in the summer of 1938; in 1941 the city decided to stop furnishing free water to the school and began to charge them the regular domestic rate of $1.00 for the first 2000 gallons;  the creation of the city dog pound in 1964; in 1984 there were proclamations for things such as Child Support Month, Social Security Week, Alzheimer’s  Awareness Month, etc.; a trash truck was approved for purchase in 1998 for $61,463,00. Recycling was discussed at length during the 1990’s and a Recycling Center was opened in Nov 2001.

Lockheed Martin

The folks at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Fort Worth, are collaborating with us to provide access to photographs from their extensive image archives of the Mile Long Hangar, formerly operated by Consolidated Aircraft Corporation. Thousands of hard-working women contributed to the war effort by building B-24 Liberators. Fort Worth’s own “Rosie the Riveters” did their part to make the B-24 the most produced U.S. military plane in history, with over 3,000 manufactured in Fort Worth alone. On the right is an image of Charles Lindbergh touring the Mile Long Hangar in 1942, and above are images of women working in the aviation factory.

Cattle Raisers Museum
While the Cattle Raisers Museum awaits the completion of its new home at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, we’ve partnered with them to digitize their extensive photographic archive which details the importance and significance of Texas and the Southwest’s rich ranching heritage. Many of these photographs were first published in The Cattleman, the monthly magazine of the Cattle Raisers Association. This image features Jim Stroud and seven cowboys who worked the trails between Lajitas, Marfa, and Alpine around 1916.

Amon Carter Museum 
The Amon Carter Museum has partnered with us to provide access to rare books and pamphlets that detail Fort Worth’s rich history. Pictured at right is a photo and caricature of Amon Carter from Makers of Fort Worth(1914). Other materials in the works include a volume of the Panther City Parrot from 1906 (Polytechnic College);Fort Worth, the “Convention City” and a City of Beautiful Homes (1921); The Book of Fort Worth (1914); the official souvenir magazine of the 36th annual convention of the Cattle Raisers Association; The Stock manual: containing the name, post office address, ranch location, marks and brands of all the principal stockmen of western and northwestern Texas, showing marks and brands on electrotype cuts as they appear on the animal (1881); and other fascinating materials. All of these projects mentioned above are funded by the Amon Carter Foundation and the Adeline and George McQueen Foundation..

Focus on… rodeo pictures! What could be more “Texas” than a rodeo? Come on partner, and take a look. Cowgirls from Madison Square Garden Rodeo with Mrs. Randolph Hearst, 1932, UNT Archives Texas Rodeo Stars in Breckenridge, 1921, UTA Libraries Matlock Rose riding the quarter horse Buster Waggoner, George Ranch Historical Park Bob Calen trick riding in Cowboy Championship Contest, c. 1920, UNT Archives

Meet Hannah Tarver!  Hannah is a graduate student who is finishing her degree this month. Hannah’s hometown is Chandler, Arizona.

Hannah is getting her master’s degree in Library and Information Science with an emphasis in Information Organization at UNT. “I have had really awesomeprofessors here at UNT, and my time with Digital Projects has been great,” said Hannah. 

When asked what she learned working in the Digital Projects Unit, Hannah said, “I think one of the best parts of working in Digital Projects Unit for me has been that I’ve gotten to apply a lot of what I have learned in my cataloging classes to my metadata records, but I’ve also gotten a much broader view of the theory behind cataloging and how all of the traditional methods can or cannot be applied to the Internet and to different media than libraries have historically dealt with.”

“Also, I’ve gotten to do what is essentially original cataloging on items far more complicated to catalog that what I would likely see in a library, so I’ve been challenged in ways that will make other cataloging relatively easy,” added Hannah. 

“In terms of graduation, I think the broader perspective has really given a different angle in my class work.  I have brought up my work in Digital Projects and the way that Portal to Texas History records are handled as examples in several of my classes and even cited them in papers as examples of non-traditional cataloging. Of course, it’s given me the sort of experience that’s hard to get, but a huge bonus in my field, particularly now that so many institutions are trying to find ways to incorporate digitization.”

Hannah has been an integral part of the Digital Projects Unit since August of 2007.   All of the Portal to Texas History staff wish Hannah a big Congratulations on all of her accomplishments while here at UNT.  

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) honored the Portal to Texas History this summer by selecting us for inclusion on their website EDSITEment as one of the best online resources for education in the humanities. Michael Hall with NEH said, “The Portal to Texas History was nominated for inclusion in the EDSITEment project in response to an open call for nominations posted on our website and on several humanities listservs. Your site was then reviewed by a Peer Review panel composed of teachers and leaders in education and non-profit organizations. Panelists determined that your site met the EDSITEment criteria for intellectual quality, content, design, and most importantly, classroom impact.”The panelists who reviewed the Portal website had great things to say about us:

• “The digital reproductions of photos and primary documents on this site provide visitors of all levels with a rich experience.”
• “It does provide students with access to authentic and significant materials with precise references and clear content.”
• “This site is user-friendly and attractive graphically.”

We’re really proud to be honored by NEH by their inclusion in EDSITEment, and look forward to making an impact in classrooms for years to come.

Stuart Reid spoke with us recently about the role the Portal to Texas History played for him while he was writing his award winning book, The Secret War for Texas. Stewart Reid was a historical consultant to the National Trust for Scotland for the Culloden Moor Memorial Project. He has been a librarian, a boatman, a professional soldier, a cartographer, and a surveyor, among other things. He has written twelve entries for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and is the author of fourteen previous books. He lives in the United Kingdom.

What was your inspiration for writing The Secret War for Texas? It was simple curiosity. I am primarily a military historian specializing in the 18th century, but quite by chance I discovered a cryptic reference to my 3 x great grandfather, Dr James Grant, having been killed or murdered in Mexico. Rather to my surprise I then very soon found that he had been a pivotal figure in the Texas Revolution, and was blamed for all the disasters arising out of the Matamoros expedition, from the collapse of the provisional government to the fall of the Alamo. Yet astonishingly little had been written about him – and most of that was wildly inaccurate – despite what turned out to be some very rich source material.

What are the challenges in writing a Texas history book while living in Scotland? Well actually it had its advantages, first because I had access to family information on Dr. Grant not available in Texas, and secondly because I had access to documents in the India Office, relating to his service with the East India Company, and to the (British) National Archives at Kew, where I was able to work through confidential papers relating to Mexico – and Texas as part of Mexico. The challenges, obviously, were at the Texas end. Thanks to the Portal I was able to access specific documents.

How did the materials in the Portal to Texas History help you when doing your research?  Ultimately it’s the straightforward matter of being able to access original documents and transcripts rather than relying on re-hashing secondary sources which almost invariably do little more than perpetuate old errors of fact and interpretation.

Did you find anything surprising or revelatory in the Portal? There’s probably nothing specific I can point  a finger to, other than to stress again what a different picture you get when you jettison secondary sources and everything else you’ve ever been told and then work from the ground up using the original materials. Any work of this kind always has its moment; not always as spectacular as finding the reference in a letter warning of a British agent, a “Doctor Somebody” who could only have been James Grant; which had me yell “Gotcha!” in the National Archives reading room, but there’s always that sense of connection at first hand with the real people we think of as history.

The Portal team and our partners at the Center for American History at UT have received a new grant for digitizing “Early Texas Newspapers – 1829-1861,” a comprehensive grant to microfilm, digitize, and provide free public access to the earliest Texas newspapers held by the Center for American History. The Texas State Library and Archives Commission awarded $24,637 for the project, which will begin in September and finish in August of 2009.

The scope of the project includes sixty-one newspaper titles, and a total of 12,280 newspaper pages.  A partial representative list of selected titles includes:  The Texas Gazette (San Felipe de Austin), 1829-30, 60 pages; Telegraph & Texas Register (Houston), 1835-1845, 2,137 pages; Texas Republican (Brazoria), 1834-36, 127 pages; Galvestonian, 1839, 4 pages; Matagorda Bulletin, 1827-39, 128 pages; Redlander (San Augustine), 1841-1846, 140 pages; Southwestern American (Austin), 1849-53, 488 pages; Centinela (Brownsville, in Spanish), 1849, 4 pages; Texas Presbyterian(Victoria), 1846-48, 38 pages; Galveston News, 1848-1861, 112 pages; and Texas National Register (Washington), 1844-46, 88 pages.

Due to Texas’s frontier nature, business uncertainties, and the volatility of the political situation with Spain and Mexico, no newspapers survived long in Texas up to the time of the Texas revolt against Mexico. Nine publishers printed newspapers between 1819 and 1836, but only the Telegraph and Texas Register was still in publication at the time of the Texas Revolution. The Telegraph and Texas Register became the paper of record for the Republic of Texas, and played a major role in keeping citizens informed. Five years after Texas became a state in 1845, the number of newspapers had grown to thirty-six.  The collection of newspapers proposed for microfilming and digitization provide critical information regarding the early history of Texas, both as a republic and a state. 

The FCC Record 
Last year , the UNT Government Documents Department collaborated with the Digital Projects Unit to provide access to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Record, comprising 620 volumes and over 364,500 pages of searchable text. The FCC Record is a comprehensive compilation of decisions, reports, public notices, and other documents of the FCC from 1986 to the present.Several volumes document the FCC’s many actions against “shock jock” Howard Stern during the 1990s. Now UNT is the only place in the world where researchers can search the full text of these important documents.

Help us spread the word and please forward this newsletter to anyone you think will be interested.