Emily Dickinson. "Soul take thy risk"
Emily Dickinson. “Soul take thy risk”

We are delighted that so many people are using the Emily Dickinson manuscripts we made available through Amherst College Digital Collections. Over the past six months we have digitized other materials from the Archives and are pleased to announce that hundreds of new digital images have been uploaded and are now available to researchers the world over.

The development of Amherst College Digital Collections — ACDC for short — is a highly collaborative process. We work closely with the good folks in the Frost Library Digital Programs and Technical Services departments, and Amherst’s Information Technology to identify materials, image them, provide useful metadata, and get them uploaded to ACDC. The latest additions come from a wide range of collections in the Archives, including some great material from Dickinson’s contemporaries Edward and Orra White Hitchcock.

#39 Fossil Footprints - Ornithichnites
Orra White Hitchcock drawing of five lines of ornithichnites fossil footprints

We are in the process of digitizing everything in the Edward and Orra White Hitchcock Papers, but it’s going to take quite a while to work through all 31 boxes so we’re making material available online as we go. Among the materials currently available are the classroom charts that Orra White Hitchcock painted for use in her husband Edward’s lectures on geology. Edward Hitchcock is responsible for building the outstanding collection of dinosaur tracks held by Amherst College in the Beneski Museum of Natural History. Now anyone with an internet connection can see Orra’s illustrations of these specimens and read Edward’s account books for the Natural History Fund. Anyone interested in nineteenth-century science, particularly geology, will find a treasure trove in the Hitchcock materials now online.

Edward Hitchcock account book for the natural history fund of Amherst College, 1853-1863
Edward Hitchcock account book for the natural history fund of Amherst College, 1853-1863

Last September, Rebecca did a post about a manuscript memoir written by Royal Cole. Now the whole of this document is freely available in ACDC.

Interior Turkey Reminiscences title page
Royal Cole. Interior Turkey Reminiscences.

In a post here last summer, Mimi wrote about “The Flight of the Eagle” by John Burroughs. This manuscript is now in ACDC.

Flight of the Eagle (title page)
Flight of the Eagle (title page)

Last, but not least, we have added four photo albums full of pictures of Amherst’s sister school in Kyoto — Doshisha University — from our Doshisha Collection.

Doshisha University Photo Album 1
Doshisha University Photo Album 1

Stay tuned for more updates about Archives & Special Collections materials being added to ACDC!

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