Making of America (MoA) is a collaborative effort by

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

and the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

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 List of largest libraries in the United States#Largest research libraries ...

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

e-text e-text (from "'' electronic text''"; sometimes written as etext) is a general term for any document that is read in digital form, and especially a document that is mainly text. For example, a computer-based book of art with minimal text, or a se ...

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 The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...

. For the beginning phase of the project, the

Antebellum Period In the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit= before the war) spanned the end of the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. The Antebellum South was characterized by ...

through the Reconstruction Era, 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 The Digital Library Federation (DLF) is a program of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) that brings together a consortium of college and university libraries, public libraries, museums, and related institutions with the stated ...

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. 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 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