LC National Digital Library Program announces updates to two collections

[Tamara Swora-Gober <tswo@xxxxxxx>]

This message is being widely posted

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The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program announces
updates to two of the historical collections currently available online: 

The New Deal Stage:  Selections from the Federal Theater Project, 1935-1939
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fedtp/

and

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/smhtml/

New Deal Stage- The update to The New Deal Stage: Selections from the
Federal Theater Project, 1935-1939 adds an additional 10,000 images,
primarily playscripts and administrative documents to the documents
already online.  The New Deal Stage collection includes playscripts,
production materials including the production notebooks with plot
synopses, notes and blueprints of set designs and director?s notes,
photographs, posters and administrative records selected from a New Deal
WPA arts project.  At their height these WPA projects provided work to
over 12,000 out of work artistic professionals, encouraged the
development of over 1,200 plays and the introduction of over 100 writers
to the American public.  The Federal Theater Project was the largest of
the New Deal arts program with a budget of 46 million dollars by 1939. 
Some of the more visionary projects included a swing version of Gilbert
and Sullivan?s ?The Mikado? and what is popularly known as the ?voodoo?
version of MacBeth, the staging of classic Shakespearian tragedy with a
largely African-American cast which was directed by Orson Welles.

Digitizing New Deal Stage -  The online Federal Theatre Project
Collection serves as a test bed for three demonstration activities
designed to increase the Library's understanding of issues and methods
associated with digitizing collections which were completed in
cooperation with the LC National Digital Library Program.  The IBM
Digital Library Demonstration, an Imaging and database project organized
by IBM and Information Technology Services, the Library of Congress
computer center.  The.Manuscript Digitization Demonstration Project. an
Imaging project carried out by Picture Elements, Inc. with support from
the Preservation Directorate.  The EAD Finding Aid. Project where a
collection register was marked up to conform to the Encoded Archival
Description standard was carried out by the Library of Congress Music
Division.  Project reports and summaries are available through the
Digitizing the Collection overview  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fedtp/ftover.html

Music for the Nation - A new special presentation ?Greatest Hits,
1870-1885? has been added to Music for the Nation site.  The material on
this site has been taken from Julius Mattfield's "Variety Music
Cavalcade" 1620-1969: A Chronology of Vocal and Instrumental Music
Popular in the United States (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1971).  In addition more than 24,000 additional sheet music items have
been added to the collection, bringing the total number of musical
compositions represented to over 47,000 items and over 370,000 images
scanned from 441 reels of 35mm roll microfilm.  The first of the
Library?s digitized collections to consist entirely of sheet music,
Music for the Nation provides a close look at musical Americana in the
post-Civil War period, providing a comprehensive view of the range of
music being published in the United States at that time. 

Digitizing Music for the Nation - Typically the documents on the
microfilm are four pages in length with a front and back cover. They are
2A position (cine) frames which were split for single image presentation
as digital images.  Most all of the sheet music material was scanned as
bitonal TIFF images initially at 300 dpi and later all at 400 dpi with
Group IV compression.  Since there was tonality present in the covers,
they were scanned as 200 dpi grayscale JPEG compressed images as were
any images where the originals appeared soiled, damaged or deteriorated
on the microfilm.  The grayscale solution was also used for other
problem pages or frames.  Much like our experience in scanning
handwritten manuscript materials, the tonal capture was able to suppress
some of the print-through in the covers so that the text is able to be
read.  Similarly, stamps and markings on these covers were also enhanced
and made legible by grayscale capture. 

In addition to providing access to the sheet music of the time, the
collection also includes performances of selected items by the Music for
the Nation Singers, composed of staff members of the Library of Congress.

Please send any questions or comments regarding these and all other
American Memory Collection to NDLPCOLL@xxxxxxxx