GROUP PROJECTS--HISTORIC FOOD

Students working on an Historic Foods Group Project might want to begin by consulting the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America at the CEU Library reference desk.

You might also want to visit these very good online exhibits to get some ideas:

“Key Ingredients: America by Food,” from the Smithsonian Institution
http://www.keyingredients.org/default.asp

“Not By Bread Alone: America’s Culinary Heritage,” from Cornell University Library.
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/food/default.htm

An excellent online resource is “Food Timeline,” a web site maintained by a reference librarian and food history junkie.
http://www.foodtimeline.org/

The site is chock full of information and links to more information, but it is a bit disorganized and a lot of its good stuff can be missed. Here are some suggestions for specific pages within “Food Timeline” that might be helpful:

“Popular American Foods by Decade”
http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html

“American Picnics: Then and Now”
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpicnics.html

“Historic Food Prices”
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq5.html

“American Public School Lunches”
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodschools.html

GROUP PROJECTS--HISTORIC MUSIC

There are lots of excellent sites on the world wide web about the history of American music and many provide free access to audio files which can be downloaded and used for educational purposes. The CEU Library also has an excellent collection of CDs.

Here are some suggestions:

The Library of Congress, through its web site American Memory, has a huge collection of primary source documents on American music including sheet music, audio files, and even some early films (silent) from the Vaudeville era. There are 31 different collections under the category of “Performing Arts and Music.” You might want to look through the index for project ideas. Some of my favorite collections are:

“American Variety Stage”
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vshtml/vshome.html

“Voices from the Dust Bowl”
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tshome.html

“Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943”
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ftvhtml/ftvhome.html

“Inventing Entertainment: Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies”
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edhome.html

Another extensive collection of early music recordings is Dismuke’s Talking Machine which has RealAudio files of phonograph recordings from the period 1900-1939.
http://www.dismuke.org/

The “Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project,” at the University of California, Santa Barbara has digitized versions of more than 5,000 wax cylinder recordings. Access to the recordings is by title, so you must know what you are looking for to make use of this great online resource.
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php

"Digital History" has a large collection of historic music. The site includes a collection of audio files as well as links to other web sites with audio files. You can view the audio files and links by song title or by type of music. There is no search function.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/audio/music.cfm

The Authentic History Center includes lots of historic music organized into chronological periods. This is a commercial site and its owner does sell cds of historic music, but there are also lots of free downloadables.
http://www.authentichistory.com