Humanities

By Erica Bruchko, Librarian for United States History and African American Studies, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University

The week of April 27^th – May 4^th 1861 was an eventful one for both Union and Confederate supporters. Virginia offered Richmond as the Confederate capital, Maryland voted against secession, and President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation to increase the size of the Union Army. This history, along with other key events of the American Civil War, is recorded within the Woodruff Library’s extensive digital collection of Civil War Era materials. By exploring  Emory’s database portal, students and scholars can find important newspapers, letters, diaries and other sources, which provide a window into the lives of the men and women who experienced the War firsthand. Some collection highlights include:

Emory Libraries has contributed 430 digital items/objects to the ASERL Civil War digital project.  The "Civil War & the American South:  Primary source materials from the Southeast’s leading research libraries.”  Emory's contributions to the site can be found under "MARBL" under "contributing institutions."  You can limit your search to collections at select institutions, including our own.  Thanks to MARBL (especially David Faulds) and the Digitization and Digital Curation Team for selecting and d

Last year the BBC released a documentary series entitled The Beauty of Maps. Episode 2 explored William Morgan’s remarkable Map of London (1682) which was produced after the Great London Fire of 1666. This was the first time the whole city had ever been surveyed, drawn to scale, and depicted with such detail.

Submitted by Chris Pollette

When you visit the main library at Emory University, chances are you’ll see a statue of a man near the entrance. It’s Robert W. Woodruff, the longtime head of The Coca-Cola Company, former Emory student, and the person for whom the library is named. If you’ve spent any time in Atlanta, you know there are other buildings named for him.

On Friday, March 18th more than 200 digital humanists — scholars, librarians, administrators, and others — all around the world documented what they do over the course of a day. It's an annual project called Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities. The goal is to help clarify in concrete terms what, exactly, it means to be a digital humanist.

You can follow along in a few different ways.

By Brian Croxall, Chris Pollette, and Miriam Posner

Michael Page, Kwesi Degraft-Hanson and Kyle Thayer recently discussed their collaborative project, Unearthing the Weeping Time: Savannah's Ten Broeck Race Course and 1859 Slave Sale, that utilizes library resources and ties humanistic inquiry with geographic investigation, mapping, and 3D technology http://southernspaces.org/2010/unearthing-weeping-time-savannahs-ten-broeck-race-course-and-1859-slave-sale