Making of America (MoA) is a collaborative effort by

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

and the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

to digitize and make available a collection of primary sources relating to the development of U.S. infrastructure. The Making of America collection at Cornell contains close to a million pages from more than 250 monographs and almost 1000 serials. The

University of Michigan Library The University of Michigan Library is the academic library system of the University of Michigan. The university's 38 constituent and affiliated libraries together make it the second largest research library by number of volumes in the United Sta ...

holds almost 13,000 volumes containing nearly four million pages of

e-text e-text (from "''electronics, electronic text''"; sometimes written as etext) is a general term for any Electronic document, document that is read in digital data, digital form, and especially a document that is mainly text. For example, a compute ...

History

The initial phase of the Making of America project began in 1995 with the development of an organized collaboration between the University of Michigan and Cornell University. The original funding for the project was in the form of grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For the beginning phase of the project, the

Antebellum Period The ''Antebellum'' South era (from ) was a period in the history of the Southern United States that extended from the conclusion of the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. This era was marked by the prevalent practi ...

through the

Reconstruction Era The Reconstruction era was a period in History of the United States, US history that followed the American Civil War (1861-65) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the Abolitionism in the United States, abol ...

, 1850-1877 was selected; the project initiators felt that the literature of this period was appropriate for the beginning phase because it was manageable in scope, of high interest to potential users and the original documents were in need to reformatting due to rapid deterioration. The two participating institutions each focused on different aspects of this period of literature based on what each already had in its collections. The University of Michigan libraries worked primarily on monographs while Cornell University focused on the journal literature of this period. Plans are underway to continue the expansion of the Making of America Project with the involvement of other major research libraries and the Digital Library Federation.

Digital conversion and implementation

The original print documents included in the Making of America project were scanned to create the digital copies that are included in the collection. The digital conversion process was completed by Northern Micrographic, Inc. in

La Crosse, Wisconsin La Crosse ( ) is a city in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. Positioned alongside the Mississippi River, La Crosse is the largest city on Wisconsin's western border. La Crosse's population was 52,680 as of the 202 ...

. The digital Making of America collection is mounted online using the Digital Library Extension System (DLXS) which was developed by the University of Michigan.{{Cite web, url = http://www.dlxs.org/about/aboutdlxs.html, title = DLXS Overview, date = , accessdate = December 9, 2015, website = DLXS.org, publisher = , last = , first =

Using the collection

The Making of America collection can be searched through both the

and

Cornell University Library The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over eight million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 Periodical literature, periodical ti ...

websites. The interface provides browsing and searches of various types including basic, Boolean, bibliographic, and proximity. The Cornell University Library site specifically states that permissions are not required to use items from the Making of America project collection, but recommends a credit line to be included. The University of Michigan offers reprints of included materials and Cornell University can provide enhanced files if desired.

References

External links

Cornell Making of America (MoA)University of Michigan Making of America (MoA)
Cornell University American digital libraries