|
State University of New York at Stony
Brook
Melville Library
Map
Collection
Stony Brook, NY 11794-3331
Long Island History on the World Wide
Web
By David Yehling
Allen
March 16, 2001
Links updated and minor revisions, October 28, 2004
Author's
note: a slightly different version of this article was published in the Spring, 2001, issue of the Long Island Historical
Journal . This article is being co-published on the Web by
permission of the journal's editor. This Web-based version will be updated
as new information is received.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Sites Devoted Primarily to
Long Island History
Finding Information
about Long Island History at Comprehensive Sites
The Future of Long Island's
Past of the Internet
Notes
Introduction
This article is part review essay,
part prophecy, and part advocacy. By now most Long Island historians have used
the World Wide Web for research or teaching. Still, many are uncertain about
exactly what is available on "the Web," and few have pondered how the Web may
affect their work in the future.
Even in the
case of a narrowly focused area, such as Long Island history, a surprising
amount of primary and secondary material is already available on the Web. Much
of it is "hidden" in the sense that it cannot be found by using a search engine
to locate material under an obvious subject like "Long Island
history": rather it has to be ferreted out by looking for sites on
specific subjects, such as Walt Whitman or the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway, or else
by sifting through huge collections, such as the American Memory Project at the
Library of Congress.
This article discusses a
number of Web sites with information about Long Island history. They will be
described and evaluated, and hints will be provided on how to use them. To
facilitate its use as a resource guide for the Internet, this article is being
published on the Web with active links to the sites discussed. This
article will be revised periodically as new resources become
available.
The article concludes with a
discussion of the possible future of Long Island history on the Internet. A
program is set forth for digitizing large quantities of historical materials
relating to Long Island, and prospects for realizing such a program are
considered.
Sites Devoted Primarily to Long
Island History
There are few sites
devoted solely to Long Island history. The best known and most important is
Newsday's Long Island, Our Story , and we will begin by
reviewing that site (http://www.lihistory.com/). Not only is the
Newsday site the most comprehensive one dealing solely with Long Island
history, but it also illustrates many of the possibilities and problems of
historical publication on the Web.
The Newsday site is an
outgrowth of its "Long Island History Project," which has led to a
series of articles in the newspaper, and a handsomely illustrated book, also
bearing the title Long Island, Our Story . Most of the content of
the Web site also appeared in the articles and in the book.(1)
The Newsday project has been warmly received by most Long Island historians--as
well it should have been, for it has made available in easily digestible
form a wealth of information about Long Island's past.(2) In many respects
Newday's beautifully illustrated book and its counterpart on the Web provide the
best existing overview of Long Island history. The journalists who wrote the
individual stories generally did a good job of familiarizing themselves with the
contemporary historical literature on their subjects, and of summarizing it for
a wide audience. Reflecting the interests of contemporary historians, Newsday's
book includes a good deal of information on such subjects as women, Native
Americans, blacks, and everyday life on Long Island. These subjects have been
given short shrift in most earlier works that attempt an overview of Long Island
history.(3 )
In spite of its considerable
merits, Newsday's production, in all of its formats, has serious
limitations as a work of history. Many of these are probably
inescapable in a work written by a team of journalists. The quality of the
articles is uneven. The articles written by the lead
reporters on the project (Steve Wick and George DeWan) reflect wide
knowledge of Long Island history. They are based on interviews,
extensive reading of the modern historical literature, and some reading of
primary sources and older works. On the lower end of the scale, a few
of the articles are downright inaccurate, and reflect very little research of
any kind. Inevitably, even at its best, the Newsday series
does not measure up to the standards of professional historians. They
do not have the authority and depth one finds in works by historians who have
spent years immersed in their subjects. In common with many of the older
comprehensive works on Long Island history, there is also a certain lack of
coherence to Long Island, Our Story . The work as a whole does not
constitute a narrative grounded on careful analysis of broad developmental
themes. The work is a loosely organized collection of articles and
vignettes, which few would want to read from cover to cover. Finally, the
articles lack footnotes and bibliographies. Thus, there is often no way to check
the veracity of the sources of information used in the stories, and they cannot
be used as launching pads for further research.
One of the purposes of the Newsday series is to provide material for use
in elementary and secondary education. But, especially on the secondary
level, one has to wonder how useful such information really is. Although Newsday
accompanies its stories with contemporary illustrations and selected original
source materials, there are not enough of them to use for original research. A
student paper written using only what Newsday provides would read very much like
it was based on an article in an encyclopedia. One would hope that even at the
high school level students would be encouraged to go beyond this approach, and
arrive at their own conclusions based on reading a variety of conflicting
sources.
It would be unfair to take
Newsday to task for not producing an academic work of history, which was not its
purpose and would probably not appeal to most of its
readership. However, this does not mean that we should ignore its
limitations--many of which could have been avoided or corrected. The
translation of Long Island, Our Story into Web format provided an
opportunity to remedy many of the weaknesses of the book, and the Newsday staff
has taken some advantage of this opportunity.
It easy to revise documents on the
Web, to add materials, and to provide links to related resources. The
Newsday staff has done this to some extent, and added a large amount of
supplementary material to the original book. This new material
includes a section called "The Vault," which includes selected source documents,
as well as photographs and video clips. Another section, "Our Towns,"
includes brief town histories, which are often embellished with old
photographs. The town histories usually include a final paragraph
entitled "Where to Find More," which mentions local libraries, historical
societies, and sometimes books. The lack of such a feature is a
serious weakness in the book version of Long Island, Our
Story .
Newsday has so far been shy about adding
to or revising the articles that originally appeared in the book. It
is understandable that the editors would want to retain the integrity of the
original articles, but it is a pity that they do not correct even obvious
errors. It would also be a fairly simple matter to add bibliographies to
the individual sections on the Web. They might be placed in a separate section
in "The Vault," and linked to the original stories. And, of course,
hyperlinks could be added to related materials on the Internet. These additions
would help students and researchers to move beyond the circumscribed
presentation of Newsday's series, and to explore on their own the much wider
world of Long Island history. Being unobtrusive, there is no reason
to think these additions would detract from the readability or popularity
of the original. By making the site more useful to educators and
researchers, they would probably make it more
popular.
In spite of its
limitations, Long Island, Our Story excels in breadth and depth
all of the other sites devoted to Long Island history. The other sites
relating directly to Long Island history are narrower in focus and content than
the Newsday site, and most have similar limitations. With some exceptions,
they are designed to present basic information about an institution or a
subject, rather than to provide in-depth resources for research. This is fine in
so far as it goes, but it is possible to go much
further.
A number of sites provide useful leads
for researchers looking for source materials. A useful listing has been
put up the Suffolk County Clerk's office, "Archives and Manuscript Repositories
in Nassau and Suffolk counties (http://www.co.suffolk.ny.us/webtemp3.cfm?dept=33&id=1173
). Many Long Island museums and historical societies also have Web sites:
a comprehensive list can be found on "Long Island's Page of Pages" (http://www.fordyce.org/long_island/
).
Most of the sites of historical societies
and other institutions just contain basic information about the sponsoring
institution, but others also provide substantial information about
local history. One of the information rich sites belongs to the Oyster Bay
Historical Society (http://members.aol.com/OBhistory ).
This growing site includes a brief history of Oyster Bay, along with a selection
of historical documents, a gallery of historical photographs, and a collection
of links to related resources. This is also a good place to begin looking for
information on Oyster Bay's most famous resident, Theodore
Roosevelt, though you can turn directly to such sources as the National
Park Service's Sagamore Hill Website (http://www.nps.gov/sahi/ ), or to the huge
site maintained by the Theodore Roosevelt Association (http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/
).
Another site worth special mention is
that of the Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society (http://www.cowneck.org/ ). In addition
to information about the Port Washington area, this site includes an outstanding
collection of links to a wide range of sites dealing with all aspects of Long
Island history.
Westernmost Long Island is also
relatively well served by Web sites. Brooklyn On Line has a page devoted to
Brooklyn's history with a variety of interesting things on it (http://www.brooklynonline.com/history/).
My favorite part of this site is devoted to the Battle of Brooklyn (also known
as the Battle of Long Island). Those interested in Brooklyn history will also
want to look at Michael Cassidy's genealogy oriented site (http://www.panix.com/~cassidy). A
highlight of this site is the complete text of Henry Stile's History of the
City of Brooklyn (1867).(4
)
Another useful site is hosted by the Friends
for Long Island's Heritage (http://www.fflih.org/ ). This site contains
information about that organization's projects, and about the museums and
preserves it supports in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The Friends site
includes a link to the Cradle of Aviation Museum (http://www.cradleofaviation.org/ ),
which boasts one of the most content rich sites on Long Island, and
provides fairly detailed articles about various aspects of the history of
aviation on Long Island, including photographs, sound recordings, and other
resources. Those interested in aviation history or the general area around
Mitchel Field will also want to take a look at the Hempstead Plains site (http://www.hempsteadplains.com/
).
Other forms of transportation are also
relatively well served on the Internet. The Oyster Bay Historical Society
includes among its resources a Long Island Railroad History Project, which has
links to several related sites, including The Railroad Museum of Long Island (http://www.bitnik.com/RMLI/). For those
interested in automotive transportation, the New York Roads site (http://www.nycroads.com/ ) is a good
starting point. It has a wealth of historical information about Long Island
roads, including maps and important planning proposals, such as the Long Island
Sound Bridge Study. It also has links to a number of related sites, including
one on the Long Island (Vanderbilt) Motor Parkway (http://www.motorparkway.net/ ).
And, finally, those who prefer to navigate by water can find a wealth of
information at the Long Island Lighthouses page (http://www.longislandlighthouses.com/
).
An interesting and well-done community-based
site is "Longwood's Journey" (http://www.longwood.k12.ny.us/history/
). This site provides a wealth of information about the little known Longwood
area (Coram, Middle Island, Yaphank, and Ridge). The Longwood site, which was
put together in part by social studies students at Longwood Middle School,
provides a good historical summary of the development of the area, along with
historical census information, maps, selections from newspapers and diaries, and
even obituaries. I was particularly impressed by the use of details from
property maps to show the development of the Longwood community through time.
This site might serve as a model for other school and community based
organizations.
Sites created by genealogists are
often rich sources of information about local history. Perhaps here more than
anywhere else is revealed the extent to which the Internet has contributed
to a grass-roots resurgence of interest in local history. It is already
been noted that the complete text of an important history of Brooklyn can be
found on a genealogical web site. The most important single site for New York
State genealogy is NYgenweb (http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenweb/),
which hosts pages for most counties in the state. Many of the upstate county
pages on Nygenweb include historical maps and digital versions of important
books on local history. The NYGEN sites for Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk
counties are not yet so richly endowed, but all are worth visiting. Look for
lists of cemeteries (and their residents), census records, brief town histories,
lists of churches, and related links of interest to both genealogists and local
historians. Also worth investigating is "The Long Island Genealogy
Page" (http://longislandgenealogy.com/
). This page has a number of interesting links, including one to a site
that includes the full text of several old Long Island business directories (http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygglshp/Long_Island_Directories.html
).
There are also sites devoted to individual
Long Islanders. Long Island's poetic icon, Walt Whitman, predictably has the
most extensive coverage. Access to the several sites with Whitman material can
be obtained through a Long-Island based "Walt Whitman" page (http://www.liglobal.com/walt ). This
site has links to extensive collections of material by and about Whitman at the
Library of Congress and at the University of Virginia. The Walt Whitman
Hypertext Archive at the University of Virginia (
http://Jefferson.Village.Virginia.EDU/whitman) is especially impressive. It
includes a comprehensive bibliography on Whitman, reviews of Whitman's works,
the complete text of his published writings, and a variety of manuscript works,
notebooks, and letters. It is the only site discussed in this section of this
article with enough information to allow for extensive original
research.
Other literary lights also have
Web pages devoted to them, although none receive such extensive treatment as
Whitman. A number of sites are devoted to F. Scott Fitzgerald, including the
F.Scott Fitzgerald Centenary page at the University of South Carolina (http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/ ).
There are several sites with information on Jupiter Hammon, Long Island's first
black poet. One of the best is Paul Reuben's page, which includes a bibliography
and timeline, as well as the text of several of Hammon's works (http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap2/hammon.html).
There is even a site devoted to Jack Kerouac at Northport (http://www.liglobal.com/beat/kerouac/).
There are many other sites with information about people associated in some way
with Long Island. Generally speaking, it is relatively easy to locate sites
dealing with specific people, places, or events by using search engines, such as
AltaVista or Google.
Searching for materials on
the Web can sometimes turn up strange and unexpected things. One such surprise
occurred when I was looking for information about Camp Hero (the military base
near Montauk point). I discovered that there is practically a whole subculture
concerned with experiments allegedly conducted at Camp Hero during World War II
involving time travel, flying saucers, extraterrestrials, and massive atrocities
by the federal government. While all or most of this is doubtless nonsense, this
cult would make an interesting subject for the student of popular culture. To
find out more, look for links at the aptly named "Surfing the Apocalypse"
site
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.com). Who would have thought that Long
Island has a location to rival Rosewell, New Mexico?
I hope it is not presumptuous to include in
this discussion my own site for the Map Collection at the University at Stony
Brook (http://www.stonybrook.edu/library/map/
). This site includes a set of pages entitled "Long Island Maps and Their
Makers," which provides a brief overview of the history of Long Island
cartography, and serves as an introduction to the book with the same title.(5) However, this is not the
place to go for high quality digital images of Long Island maps. Better images
of entire maps can be found at this site on the page "New York State Historical
Maps," and many of these maps include Long Island. The best images of Long
Island maps can now be found elsewhere. Technical developments in the past few
years have made it possible for institutions with sufficient resources to
produce and distribute over the Internet very high quality images of large maps.
Links to such maps depicting Long Island can be found on the last page of "Long
Island Maps and Their Makers," and through the "New York State Maps Pathfinder,"
which is part of "New York State Historical Maps." Particular attention should
be given to the Library of Congress site (panoramic maps, railroad maps, some
early maps); the David Rumsey Collection (many nineteenth-century maps); the
University of Connecticut (early maps showing Connecticut and Long Island, Long
Island Sound); and the National Ocean Service (published Coast Survey maps).(6
)
Some Long Island property maps and atlases
had also been digitized when this article was originally published. These works were mostly made between 1850 and
1920, and show individual homeowners and sometimes property lines.
These qualities make property maps favorites of genealogists, archaeologists,
and town historians. A 1906 property map of Long Island by E. Belcher Hyde has been digitized by Newsday,
but appears to be no longer available as of 2004.(7) High
quality black and white images of the important Atlas of Long
Island by F.W. Beers (1873) were posted on a genealogical site, but also appear to be no longer available on the Web.
Somewhat strangely, although maps are
among the most difficult materials to digitize, Long Island historians are
better provided with cartographic materials than with any other type of
information in digital form. Nonetheless, much work remains to be
done. Many property atlases remain to be digitized, and
other types of maps have yet to make an appearance on the Web. Fire
insurance maps are among the many types of maps that are not yet freely available on
the Internet. Fire insurance maps resemble property maps, but
are still more detailed, and even include information about the
construction of individual buildings. Also not yet available in
digital form are the manuscript Coast Survey maps, which provide the earliest
detailed cartographic picture of all of Long Island.(8)
The situation of Long Island maps is representative in one respect of all types
of Long Island historical resources on the Internet. The material at a site
labeled "Long Island" constitutes only a small fraction of what is available
elsewhere on the Web. In the case of maps, links have been made to similar
materials at other locations. In the case of most other materials, such a
comprehensive collection of links does not exist, and it is up to individual
researchers to somehow find the numerous resources that exist somewhere in
cyberspace.
Finding Information about Long
Island History at Comprehensive Web Sites
Most of the material on the Web
useful for original research on Long Island history is on sites with a broader
focus than just Long Island. This should not be surprising, since digitizing
historical materials is expensive, and funding has been easier to find for
projects that are national in scope.
A good
place to begin a consideration of these sites is JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org/). Unlike most of the
sites presented here, JSTOR, which stands for Journal Storage project, is not
freely available on the Internet, but only through subscribing institutions.
Many research libraries belong to JSTOR, including the University at Stony
Brook, and unaffiliated researchers can get access to it at the University
libraries. Nonsubscribers can obtain basic information about JSTOR at the
Internet address (URL) given above.
JSTOR consists of the back runs of over
120 heavily used academic journals. These include twenty historical journals,
among them The American Historical Review, The Journal of Negro
History, and The William and Mary Quarterly . The back runs of
these journals are preserved as scanned digital images, which are indexed to
make them searchable by key word. Long runs of some of these journals are
available-in the case of The American Historical Review, everything from its
inception in 1895 to within a few years of the present. Because JSTOR
specializes in preserving and making available back files of journals,
publishers can continue to profit by selling current issues to their
subscribers. A "moving wall," is used to update the collection: as journal
volumes reach a certain age they are continually added to the collection. (For
example, the most recent volume of a particular journal in JSTOR might always be
the one that is three years old.)
For
researchers JSTOR has two major advantages. First, it enables them to access
back runs of journals from computers at home or office, and to print high
quality copies of articles that look much like good photocopies. In addition,
the key word indexing enables users to search through whole runs of journals, or
even through the entire JSTOR collection, using keywords, or combinations of
keywords. The sophisticated search software used by JSTOR incorporates such
features as searching by phrase and key words, use of Boolean operators
(and, or, not ), truncation of search terms, and
limitation by date of publication. In terms of the ways it can be searched,
JSTOR is typical of many of the large academic sites specializing in scholarly
materials.
The best way to understand the
implications of searching massive amounts of full text by key word is to look up
some articles on a specific subject, such as Long Island history. Because of the
huge size of the JSTOR database, searches on broadly conceived topics are likely
to be unproductive. Thus a search for the phrase "Long Island," in the twenty
historical journals yields more than 200 "hits" (the maximum allowed by the
database). It is possible to restrict searches on broad topics like this to
article titles, but "Long Island" appears in the titles of only two
articles--both dealing with the Battle of Long Island. This may be an indication
of the relative neglect of Long Island as a subject of historical research,
although it should be kept in mind that none of the historical journals included
in JSTOR include any of those dealing with Long Island or even New York State
history.
JSTOR really comes into its own when
you start to search for more circumscribed subjects. A researcher interested in
slavery on Long Island could retrieve 187 articles with the key words slave+ and
"Long Island." (The plus sign in JSTOR is a truncation symbol, which allows you
to retrieve such variants as "slave," "slavery," and "slaveholder.") A search
for Jupiter Hammon yields 16 articles in the collection of historical journals;
journals dealing with African-American studies are in a separate collection, and
you can get an additional 15 articles by including them in your search. Those
interested in the American Revolution will find 196 articles containing "battle"
and "Long Island" on the same page; more than 200 articles can be retrieved by
searching for "battle" and "Brooklyn." To narrow down searches with too many
results, try including specific names or places. The name of Washington's
spymaster, Benjamin Tallmadge, appears in only seven articles. The moral is that
researchers using this type of database need to be flexible and try a variety of
combinations of terms to get the results they
want.
Keep in mind that current issues of
historical journals are often also available in electronic format. With few
exceptions they, too, are not free, and must be accessed through institutions
that subscribe to them. A list of the electronic journals in history available
at the University at Stony Brook can be found on the University Library's home page (http://www.sunysb.edu/library/
).(9
)
JSTOR's use of image files in
combination with full-text indexing reoccurs in many of the large collections of
scholarly materials available on the Internet. The same combination can be found
in the Making of America (MOA) project, which is being carried out by Cornell
University (http://moa.cit.cornell.edu/) and the
University of Michigan (http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa/ ).
While JSTOR specializes in academic journals, MOA concentrates on books and
periodicals published between 1815 and 1925. This time coverage is typical of
many digital projects, since materials more than 75 years old are generally no
longer protected by copyright.
Already the
Making of America project constitutes a valuable resource for students and
researchers interested in Long Island history. Numerous references to events on
Long Island can be found in both the book and the periodical collections. The
collection at Cornell is particularly important for its Long Island holdings,
since it contains a relatively high percentage of materials relating to New York
State. These include six works dealing specifically with the history of Long
Island: The Records of the Town of Brookhaven (vols. II and III);
Gabriel Furman, Antiquities of Long Island (1874); T.G. Bergen,
Register in Alphabetical Order of Early Settlers of Kings County, Long
Island, N.Y. (1881); S.M. Ostrander, A History of the City of Brooklyn
and Kings County (1894); M.P. Bunker, Long Island Genealogies
(1895); and H.P. Hedges, A History of the Town of East-Hampton, N.Y.
(1897).
The collection at the University of
Michigan, which at present has to be searched separately, should not be ignored.
Many of the journals in that collection contain materials on Long Island, and
the book collection includes a notable treasure: the four volume Documentary
History of the State of New York edited by E.B. O'Callaghan.(10 ) Such massive
compilations of miscellaneous source materials seem to cry out full text
indexing and presentation over the Internet.
Since every single word in these collections has been indexed, they are ideal
for investigating "needle in the haystack" type questions. An example is the
often asked, but never definitively answered, question of when New York was
first called "the Empire State." Since it is possible to search for this phrase
in the full-text of the entire collection, and to restrict searches by specific
time periods, it is easy to establish usage patterns. As it turns out, the
phrase occurs frequently in all periods after 1840; there are a few uses of it
in the 1830's; and none in the period between 1815-1830. The phrase first
appears in 1833.(11 )
The casual way the phrase was used in publications from the 1830's shows that it
was already well known at that time. That it does not turn up in the MOA
collections prior to 1834 does not prove much about the origins of the phrase:
if more materials from the early nineteenth century were included in MOA,
earlier uses would doubtless be found. Nonetheless, our search does at least
show us that the phrase was well established by the middle of the
1830's.
The richness of the two MOA collections
is revealed by the results of several sample searches. What has been said about
searching in JSTOR applies generally to MOA. Because such a massive amount of
text is indexed, searches work best on very specific subjects (such as names of
towns or people). Broader subjects, such as slavery or agriculture, should be
searched using Boolean operators (and, or, not)--e.g.
"slavery" and "Long Island", or "farms" and "Suffolk County."
Keep in mind that while the same types of searches can be conducted in JSTOR and
MOA, the operators used in searching are sometimes different. Thus, the "+"sign
is used as a truncation symbol in JSTOR, while MOA uses an asterisk for the same
purpose.
Even larger than the Making of America
project is the American Memory Project (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html
). This project includes collections from a number of libraries, but its focus
is the Library of Congress, which is making many of its important holdings in
American history available in digital form through this project. Taken as a
whole, the American Memory Project constitutes the richest group of collections
of digital materials on the history of the United States, and works dealing with
Long Island are scattered unevenly through it. Most of the collections at this
site are thematic, and references to blacks and women on Long Island can be
retrieved from one of several corresponding collections. As previously noted,
the American Memory Project includes many Long Island maps. It also includes a
collection of environmental photographs from the first part of the
twentieth century, many of which show Long Island landscapes, such as a
photograph of the Hempstead Plains around 1900. Many old Long Island buildings
can be seen in a collection of early twentieth-century architectural
photographs.
The American Memory Project
provides good examples of the use of digital imaging to make rare manuscript
materials widely accessible. Both the George Washington papers and the Thomas
Jefferson papers are available at this site. It is possible to search these
collections in their entirety by key word, to read transcripts of many of the
documents in which the key words appear, and to call up digital images of the
original documents. As one might expect, the Washington Papers are a valuable
source of information about American operations on Long Island during the
Revolutionary War
New additions are made
frequently to the American Memory Project, and it pays to review its holdings
from time to time. One of the most important collections currently under
construction is entitled: "A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, U.S.
Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873." Already this collection
includes all or parts of such important Congressional publications as the
Statutes at Large, the House Journal, the Congressional
Globe, and the Congressional Serial Set. The entire collection is
indexed or searchable in some fashion. A large amount of material concerned with
Long Island can be turned up in this collection, although the coverage is uneven
and the full text of most of the materials is not indexed (the key word searches
usually cover only the indexes). As more materials are added to this collection,
especially additional volumes of the Serial Set , the Century of
Lawmaking will become an extremely valuable
resource.
Users of the American Memory Project
should be aware that searching this collection is not as simple as it may seem.
The various collections that make up the project are indexed in a variety of
different ways and to different degrees. A person logging on to the home page of
the American Memory Project may notice an option to search the entire collection
at once (including even such related collections as the Making of America
Project). While this comprehensive search is possible, the results retrieved may
be incomplete and misleading. The collections as a whole are not indexed for
this preliminary search in as much detail as are some of the individual
collections. Thus, the only way to search through every single word in the
Washington Papers or Cornell's Making of America collection is to log on to
these collections individually, and search them one at a
time.
While the above collections are the most
important for the history of Long Island, a number of other Web sites have
enough material to repay a visit. The digital collections at the New York Public
Library are among the most notable. The geographical proximity of New York City
to Long Island increases the likelihood of relevant materials being found at
this site. So far the New York Public Library has made a relatively small amount
of its holdings available in digital form, but its online collections are well
worth investigating. One, which is entitled, "Small-Town America: Stereoscopic
Views from the Robert Dennis Collection" (http://digital.nypl.org/stereoviews/),
includes many photographs of Long Island towns. The New York Public Library was
also involved with other libraries in a cooperative project entitled "Women,
Marriage and the Law, 1815-1914" (http://www.rlg.org/scarlet/ ), which
includes a good deal of information about women on Long Island. The New York
Public Library site is another that is worth revisiting periodically to see what
new collections have been added.
Although
very different in purpose and scope, two commercial sites, netLibrary (http://www.netlibrary.com/) and Xlibris
(http://www.xlibris.com/ ), are of
potential interest to Long Island historians. All of the sites discussed so far
(except JSTOR) have concentrated in making available materials that are no
longer copyrighted, and even JSTOR is a not-for-profit corporation. Netlibrary
and Xlibris, on the other hand, focus primarily on distributing copyrighted
materials. They are commercial publishers of the digital word, and, like
conventional publishers, they charge for their services, both to make a profit
and to pay royalties to authors.
NetLibrary
focuses on working with established publishers to distribute their books in
digital form. A new and rapidly growing company, they make available as of this
writing about 40,000 volumes, including many recent titles from the SUNY
University Press and the Syracuse University Press (the leading publisher of
works on New York State history). NetLibrary specializes in selling rights of
access to individual works to institutions, such as libraries, which can then
"check out" the volumes to their users for limited periods of time. Borrowers
can search the full text of the volumes by keyword, print out individual pages,
annotate pages, and cut and paste into their own manuscripts. A side benefit of
having the books in digital form is that they can be kept in print
indefinitely.(12 ) It
costs very little to store an e-book, and it is more economical to print
individual copies of little-used books on demand than it is to print and store a
whole run of them in inventory.
As with JSTOR,
it is possible for anyone to sign onto netLibrary and get some basic information
about the service, including a complete list of titles available on any subject.
But to read and download individual works, you have to obtain access through an
institution that has purchased the right to make the titles you want available
to its clientele. All of the SUNY libraries subscribe to at least a small core
group of electronic books through netLibrary, and some public libraries may be
able to provide access to selected titles through a consortium called NYLINK.(13 ) At present there
are no books dealing exclusively with Long Island history available through
this service, but it does include quite a few works dealing with other areas of
New York State, including some with information on Long Island. netLibrary
titles potentially worth exploring for references to Long Island are: Fort
Orange Records, 1656-1678 and Mark V. Wasny, Washington's Partisan War,
1775-1783 .(14 )
The contents of netLibrary are expanding rapidly, and more books relevant to
Long Island history are certain to appear in the
future.
It will be interesting to see how
popular netLibrary becomes. Most academics, myself included, would much rather
read a book in paper than in digital form. Nonetheless, researchers should
appreciate being able to do keyword searches through the complete text of books,
as well as the ability to copy blocks of text into their notes without typing
them in them by hand. For libraries there are great advantages in not having to
catalog, shelve, preserve, store, and check out books (although this does raise
some interesting questions about how librarians would spend their time in a
completely digital library). Having books readily available forever (or at least
until our computers melt down) will certainly be a boon to both libraries and
their users, who will not have to worry about locating scarce out of print
books. It is unlikely that libraries will stop buying books in paper form
anytime soon, but I expect we will be seeing much more of electronic books in
the near future.
Xlibris is of particular
interest to local historians in search of a publisher. Xlibris, which calls
itself as "a strategic partner of Random House Ventures," is one of several
enterprises that might be described as digital versions of vanity presses.
Because of their small potential market, specialized works of local history are
notoriously difficult to publish. However, the low cost of electronic publishing
and the possibility of printing on demand from digital files makes electronic
publishing an economical way to produce books with little potential for large
sales. Xlibris publishes electronic books at a minimal cost to the
author (although it charges extra for such services as illustrations and
marketing), and it pays higher royalties than standard publishers. Works may be
purchased directly from Xlibris in either digital or in paper form, and for a
fee they can be advertised through services like Amazon.com. A number of
specialized works of local history have been published by Xlibris, although so
far none of them deal with Long Island. It is nonetheless an option for writers
of Long Island history to keep in mind, and may eventually develop into a site
with enough resources to make it of interest to
researchers.
There are other places where the
diligent researcher may find materials relating to Long Island. Since we lack a
comprehensive collection of links for Long Island history, a good place to begin
further investigations is the collection of links to World Wide Web resources
put together by the New York History (http://www.nyhistory.com/
).
The
Future of Long Island's Past on the
Internet
Although the amount of
information on Long Island history on the Internet is impressive, it is only a
tiny fraction of what should be made available. A compelling case can be made
for digitizing a much larger selection of primary sources and secondary
materials. With a much more extensive collection available on the Web, students
and researchers could do much of their work without having to spend large
amounts of time in archives and special collections with their restrictions on
access and use. In addition, having the full text of these materials searchable
by keyword would make it possible to track down with relative ease bits of
information that would otherwise be lost in volumes of unread
text.
It does not require a great deal of
imagination to think of things to digitize. On the analogy of JSTOR, back issues
of Long Island historical journals, including The Journal of Long Island
History, the Nassau County Historical Journal, the Long Island
Forum, and The Long Island Historical Journal could be made
available on the Web. The full text of every issue should be made searchable by
key word.
The published records of the Long
Island towns are prime candidates for publication in digital form. So are the
classic works on Long Island history, such as Thompson's History of Long
Island (1849). They could easily be distributed in digital form, since they
are no longer under copyright. A project to render Long Island's past in virtual
form might also include early Long Island newspapers. Digitizing newspapers
would be somewhat more difficult to carry out, since most they would probably
have to be digitized from microfilm. But this, too, is feasible, and may soon
become commonplace.
Historic photographs would
be easy candidates for digitization. So would drawings and much art. Large
paintings, like large maps, require special equipment and unusual software to
distribute the resulting images, but there are many examples of such materials
being successfully made available on the Web. Although a good sampling of
cartographic material is already available, much remains to be done. There is a
particular need for digitizing property maps and county atlases, which show
individual homeowners, and are favorites for both genealogical and historical
research.
There are, of course, numerous
manuscript materials that could be digitized, but I would not give them highest
priority, simply because of the amount of work involved. Although it is not
difficult to scan manuscript materials as images, the texts have to be
transcribed by hand if they are to be searched by keyword, and hand
transcription of manuscript materials requires much labor and expertise. Scanned
images of printed materials, on the other hand, can be read by optical character
recognition (OCR) software, which greatly facilitates the task of transcription
and indexing.
All of the elements of the project
I am describing have been done elsewhere using similar types of materials.
Although there is nothing revolutionary about this proposal, there are many
reasons why it has not yet been carried out on Long Island. Much money and
specialized expertise are required to carry out large-scale digitization
projects, and so far almost all of the work that has been done is by large and
prestigious institutions, such as the Library of Congress and Cornell.
Digitizing historical materials requires
careful planning and strong institutional commitments. Many things that need to
be considered before undertaking a
digitization project. These include: making certain that
the digitized products have sufficient resolution to be useful,
assuring that they are adequately indexed or searchable by key word,
and making certain that they are adequately cataloged to ensure that people can
find them. Some sort of arrangement also has to be made
to to preserve the digital files and make them available indefinitely. It
is fairly easy to scan volumes of historical materials and put them up on the
Web. Already a number of local historical societies and genealogical groups
throughout the country have undertaken small projects of this kind. Although
such efforts are commendable, there are questions about the long-term viability
of these projects. Many of the digitized books lack key word indexing, which is
technically more difficult than simple scanning, and this limits their
usefulness. These works are often not cataloged and are difficult to track down
using Internet search engines. Finally, one wonders how long small institutions
and even private individuals will be able to preserve the digital files and make
them available. Larger organizations are in a better position to address these
issues, and before undertaking digital projects, smaller institutions would do
well to consider whether they are not taking on more than they can handle.
Probably cooperative arrangements of some kind are the answer to many of these
problems--either between smaller and larger institutions, or through smaller
institutions grouping together.
As a result of
ongoing national and statewide projects, we can expect to see more Long Island
historical materials digitized over time. Needless to say, much more could be
done if Long Island libraries, museums, and historical societies were to band
together to digitize parts of their collections. The time is ripe for Long
Island institutions to work together to develop a plan for creating a Long
Island digital library, and to start looking for funding to accomplish
it.
Notes
1.
Newsday, Inc., Long Island, Our Story: the Celebrated Series (Melville,
N.Y.: Newsday, 1998).
2. For Edwin Burrows review
of the book Long Island, Our Story, see LIHJ 11 (Spring,
1999):233-34. The Newsday project received an Award of Merit from the American
Association of State and Local History in 1999.
3.
Admittedly Newsday does not have much competition when it comes to producing a
modern history of Long Island. Most of the comprehensive histories of Long
Island date back to the nineteenth century: see Richard P. Harmond, "Doing and
Not Doing Long Island History: The Long Island Hisorians from Wood to Weeks,"
Journal of Long Island History 15 (Fall 1978):16-22, reprinted in this
issue of LIHJ. Two more recent surveys are the Society
for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities-sponsored, Robert B. MacKay,
Geoffrey L. Rossano, and Carol A. Traynor, eds., Between Ocean and Empire:
An Illustrated History of Long Island (Northridge, Cal.: Windsor
Publications, 1985), reissued as Long Island: An Illustrated History,
Robert MacKay and Richard Welch, eds. (Sun Valley, Cal.: American Historical
Press, 2000); and the Newsday-sponsored Bernie Bookbinder, Long Island:
People and Places, Past and Present (New York: Abrams, 1983, upedated ed.,
1998).
4. Henry Reed Stiles, The History of the
City of Brooklyn: Including the Old Town and Village of Brooklyn, the Town of
Bushwick, and the Village and City of Williamsburg (3 v.; Brooklyn, N.Y.:
Published by subscription, 1867-1870).
5. David Yehling
Allen, Long Island Maps and Their Makers: Five Centuries of Cartographic
History (New York: Amereon House, 1997).
6. The
National Ocean Survey site includes high-resolution images of all
printed maps of Long Island and surrounding waters published by the
Coast Survey in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This site does not
include the important manuscript maps of Long Island done by the Coast
Survey in the 1830's (see note 8 below).
7. E. Belcher Hyde
Map Co., Map of Long Island: Based upon Recent U.S. Coast Surveys, together
with Local Maps on File (Brooklyn, N.Y.: E. Belcher Hyde Map Company).
Property maps of Long Island are described in Allen, Long Island Maps and
Their Makers , 85-111, 116-18.
8. The manuscript maps
of Long Island produced by the Coast Survey in the 1830s are the first detailed
maps of many parts of the island, and contain important information about such
maters as vegetation, buildings, and roads not contained in the printed maps
mentioned in note 6. See David Yehling Allen, "Long Island Triangulated:
Nineteenth-Century Maps and Charts of the U.S. Coast Survey, Long Island
Historical Journal 6 (Spring, 1994):191-207.
9. The
University at Stony Brook Library's history collection home page is also
probably as good a place as any to begin exploring those aspects of historical
research on the Internet not discussed in this article, such as research
databases and comprehensive Web sites with links to historical subjects other
than Long Island history. The URL is: (http://www.sunysb.edu/libmap/hhome.htm
)
10. Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1849-51
11. The earliest reference to the phrase "the Empire State" in the
Making of America collection is in an article at the University of Michigan
site. This anonymous article is "Colonization and Abolition," Princeton
Review 5 (July 1833):302. The origin of the phrase is discussed by Milton
M. Klein in "A Communication," The Long Island Historical Journal 13
(Fall, 2000):139-40.
12. NetLibrary has made an agreement with OCLC,
a large not-for-profit provider of services for libraries. Under this
arrangement OCLC will maintain archival copies of eBooks from netLibrary. See
OCLC News Release, Oct. 26, 1999 (http://www.oclc.org/oclc/press/19991026.htm
).
13. Information about NYLINK can be found at: (http://nylink.suny.edu/)
14. Charles T. Gehring, ed., Fort Orange Records, 1656-1678
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000); Mark V. Kwasny,
Washington's Partisan War, 1775-1783 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University
Press, 1996). Neither of these books is yet available from the netLibrary
collection at the University at Stony Brook.
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