It’s hard to imagine given the pervasive nature of the media outlets available today – from the major broadcast networks, cable news networks, blogs, microblogs, social media avenues and more – but there was a time when the concept of a press release didn’t exist. The content readers found in their daily newspaper or heard over the air on their…
Tag: Texas Collection
(Digital Collections) Scott Joplin’s “Great Crush Collision March” and the Memorialization of a Marketing Spectacle
For most people, the name Scott Joplin brings up a common range of responses: ragtime music, the Maple Leaf Rag, and his opera Treemonisha. But you’d be hard pressed to find someone whose first reaction to hearing Joplin’s name would be, “Oh, he’s the guy who wrote the song about the staged train crash near Waco!” Strangely enough, that person…
(Digital Collections) Hidden in Plain Sight: The Students of Baylor University, 1920
Photo of Baylor University students taken on Burleson Quadrangle, February 26, 1920 (Click photo to enlarge) This installment of “Hidden in Plain Sight” features a group photo of Baylor students posed on risers on the Carroll Science Building side of the Burleson Quadrangle. The photographer – P.N. Fry of Kansas City, Missouri – would have been positioned near the Quadrangle…
(Digital Collections) Spring Hats, Julius Caesar and Marriage Proposals: Leap Day Through the Front Pages of the “Lariat”, 1904-1988
Today is February 29th, which of course means it’s Leap Day, the extra day added to the calendar every four years to make up for the fraction of an extra day we experience beyond the standard 24 hours. Over the course of four years, those fractions add up to another full day, so we add it to the end of…
(Digital Collections) Hidden in Plain Sight: Looking Closer at the Diamond Jubilee, Baylor University, 1920
Baylor University was in the mood to celebrate in 1920, for that was the year of its diamond jubilee. Seventy-five years earlier, in the Washington County town of Independence, the university was established and named for Judge R.E.B. Baylor; the ensuing decades had seen it grow into a thriving institution in a new city, Waco. This photograph was taken on…
(Digital Collections) A Friday Afternoon Lagniappe: Sketches from a Reconstruction Era Diary
We’ve got a big blog announcement going live on Tuesday morning, but until then, we present a lagniappe (from the Creole for “a little something extra”) from one of our current projects. The sketches below were found in the margins of a Reconstruction era diary kept by Henrietta Hardin Carter Harrison, the wife of the owner of Tehuacana Retreat Plantation,…
(Digital Collections) Hidden in Plain Sight: Deconstructing a 1912 Panoramic Photo
Our first post of 2012 featured this photograph of a train excursion taken by the Young Men’s Business League (YMBL) to the Texas town of Comanche in 1912. It turns out there’s a lot going on in this one photo, so we’re going to take some time today to look a little closer at what lies within. Since it’s unlikely…
(Digital Collections) “War of the Rebellion Atlas” Puts DPG on the Map in Tennessee
The Digitization Projects Group’s efforts to put the War of the Rebellion Atlas online have once again led to an exciting collaboration, this time with Zada Law, Director of the Fullerton Laboratory for Spatial Technology at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). Law will be utilizing high-resolution copies of several Atlas maps of the Nashville area to see if defensive earthworks…
(Digital Collections) Get On Board with the DPG!
Waco-Young Men’s Business League: 1912, from the Texas Collection’s Photos (1) As we kick off a new year of digitization excellence here at the DPG, we wanted to take a moment to answer a question we’re getting with increasing frequency: “How can I help?” We’ve got three simple answers! Tell your friends The more people know about our collections, the…
(Digital Collections) On Carroll Field, White Bread, and the Comfort of Electric Power
While working through some exciting new pieces we’re adding to the Baylor University Libraries Athletics Archive (BULAA) in the next few days, I spotted a couple of interesting items in a 1934 program from the Homecoming game against Texas A&M. The first thing to note is the location of the game, Carroll Field. Throughout its storied history, Baylor football games…