WNYLRC+Digital+Collections+on+New+York+Heritage

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Lily Dale Postcards (from Center for Inquiry Libraries) @http://www.newyorkheritage.org/lily-dale.php

Created for the Center for Inquiry Libraries by the Spring 2011 LIS563 Digital Libraries class at University at Buffalo, this collection includes postcards depicting several events, activities, local individuals, buildings, and landmarks of the spiritualist community in Lily Dale, New York, made famous by the Fox Sisters. Lily Dale is a small community of psychics and mediums, and it also happens to be the oldest spiritual community in North America. Lily Dale is a site of spiritual worship where tourists can get in touch with the occult and supernatural. Today, spiritualism still thrives in Lily Dale as strongly as when it was established by the Fox sisters.

Buffalo Ku Klux Klan Membership List (from Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society) @http://www.newyorkheritage.org/buffalo-kkk.php

Created for BECHS by the Spring 2011 LIS563 Digital Libraries class at University at Buffalo, this collection features a 1924 list of KKK members in Buffalo. In the early 1920s, after decades of dormancy, the Ku Klux Klan was resurgent, gaining new recruits in the Northeast by using modern sales techniques in which recruiters received commissions for signing new members. Capitalizing on anxieties about "foreigners" and racial purity, the Klan found new members in locales with otherwise strong traditions of interracial progress and tolerance. Buffalo was one such city.

Buffalo Central Terminal Scrapbook (from Buffalo & Erie County Public Library) @http://www.newyorkheritage.org/buffalo-central-terminal.php

This Buffalo & Erie County Public Library scrapbook contains mounted, local, newspaper clippings about the Central Railroad Terminal in Buffalo, New York, from 1929-1931. The Terminal opened on June 22, 1929.

Pan-American Exposition Scrapbooks (from Buffalo & Erie County Public Library) @http://www.newyorkheritage.org/pan-am-expo.php

The collection contains 24 scrapbooks of newspaper clippings from 1897 through 1904 that chronicle preparation for the 1901 Pan American Exposition, the event itself, the assassination of President McKinley, and the Exposition's impact on Buffalo, New York. It is believed that these were the first scrapbooks compiled at the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.

Westfield Local Newspapers (from Patterson Library, Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Library System) @http://www.newyorkheritage.org/westfield-newspapers.php

This collection includes the Western Argus (1857), Western Star (1826-1828), Westfield Advocate (1841), Westfield Critic (1898), Westfield Messenger (1845-1847), Westfield Republican (1856-1899), and the Westfield Transcript (1852).

Patterson Library in Westfield houses the archives of several early newspapers, including the Western Star, which began in 1826, just three years after the town itself was founded on the banks of Lake Erie, and the Westfield Republican, which is still publishing today. The area, which was first settled in 1802, is famous as the Grape Juice capital of the world, home of Welch's Grape Juice and the center of the largest and oldest concord grape growing region in the country. The pages of these early newspapers contain reports of Lincoln's visit to Westfield, during which he met Grace Bedell, the little girl who famously suggested that he grow a beard, along with other local, national, and international news from the last three quarters of the 19th century.

Reminiscent History of North Collins (Erie County, NY) (from Western New York Genealogical Society) @http://www.newyorkheritage.org/north-collins.php

Created for WNYGS by the Spring 2011 LIS563 Digital Libraries class at University at Buffalo, "Reminiscent History of North Collins (Erie County, New York)" is a handwritten diary written by a Mrs. Emily Stewart in 1914 and contains many names and events from the early history of North Collins, including businesses, organizations, doctors, churches, and schools. It is 40 pages long, and this copy was created in 1914. Dates in the diary range from 1809 to 1889.

Historic Postcards from Sardinia, NY (from Sardinia Historical Society) @http://www.newyorkheritage.org/sardinia-postcards.php

Created for SHS by the Spring 2011 LIS563 Digital Libraries class at University at Buffalo, this collection features historical postcards. Since it was founded in 1821, the town of Sardinia, NY, has remained a small, tightly knit rural community containing a mix of family farms and commuting laborers. Although rural, Sardinians have never been reluctant to adopt popular trends that often originated in the more populated cities. From the years 1900 to 1920, people across America witnessed a stunning advance in technology and improvements in quality of life. It was also a relatively prosperous time, and people were slowly learning how to have some fun and enjoy life. Taking pictures of those enjoyable and important things in life seemed to be the perfect way to capture and remember them. Turning those pictures into postcards allowed them to share their memories with friends and family who lived far away. Sardinia was no different, and this collection of postcard images carried a significant importance to not only the people who created them, but also to those who live there now and those who may be seeking a link to their ancestors who lived there long ago.

Fifth Freedom Newspaper, (from Buffalo State College) @http://www.newyorkheritage.org/5th-freedom-age.php

The Fifth Freedom was a periodic free newspaper of the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, Western New York's most prominent early gay rights organization. In being the official written mouthpiece of the region's first systematic gay rights organization, The Fifth Freedom expresses the earliest codified and widely distributed literature of the gay community within the region. With the publication of this digital collection, scholars now have universal access to this seminal civil rights-centric material. Covering the time period between 1970 and 1983, the literature of The Fifth Freedom necessarily comments on not only the self-expression of a largely "invisible" self-identified group in the years that followed the Stonewall riots and preceded the onset of the more well-known AIDS epidemic, but also upon the larger Western New York and American culture overall. The newspaper content as well as editorial direction both chronicle and critique a unique time in both American and world-wide history, as seen and expressed by an active, though underdocumented, population.


 * New York Heritage is a collaborative project among New York State’s nine Reference and Research Library Resources Councils (NY3Rs): Capital District Library Council; Central New York Library Resources Council; Long Island Library Resources Council; METRO-Metropolitan New York Library Council; Northern New York Library Network; Rochester Regional Library Council; South Central Regional Library Council; Southeastern New York Library Resources Council; and Western New York Library Resources Council.**


 * The NY3Rs, funded by New York State, work with their member institutions (libraries, archives, museums and historical societies) to digitize original research materials and make those materials available for free on the Internet. The Councils are continually adding new collections to nyheritage.org and actively seek collections to expand the site.**