Broadsides Are Now Available on Flickr

The State Library’s Special Collections Department has a collection of nearly 190 broadsides, which are single-sheet printed documents, usually eighteen to twenty inches high by fifteen or sixteen inches wide, that historically were posted on walls or carried, rolled up, to distant places. The subject matter of these broadsides is diverse, ranging from governmental communications and political election notices to poems, memorials, odes and addresses, and even commercial advertisements. The State Library's collection of broadsides contains materials ranging from the time of the American Revolution to more recent gubernatorial proclamations.

A few of the State Library’s broadsides have been digitized and are now available for public viewing on the library’s Flickr page and online repository. If you would like to view the broadsides in person, please visit the State Library’s Special Collections Department in Room 55 in the State House, which is open Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm.

- The Marketing Committee

Technological Revolution

Images from these two books on invention appear in our new Flickr set. 
Visitors familiar with State Library exhibits will recognize the cover for “Great Inventions,”
which appeared in our decorated bindings exhibit.

Today in the 21^st century, it takes a lot for a product to impress us.  Recently, Apple released the newest version of the iPhone- a cordless, pocket-sized personal telephone that can also display and record video, take pictures, send and receive messages, connect you to endless amounts of information on a global network, give you directions, even speak back to you when you give it a command… and the world is less than impressed because other devices let you do all of that, but faster, and with a (let’s face it) cooler feature of touching phones together to send information.  Incredible!  So how have we become so bored?

In the 19^th century, the endless opportunities made possible by the technological revolution awed many. Strides were made in the advancement of automated transportation, mass manufacturing of fabric and clothing, standardized means of preparing print materials, the means to examine the world’s natural elements, and so much more.  Suddenly, the notion of convenience was everywhere. The machinery that made all of this possible was shocking and newsworthy because now a variety of machines from simple to complex were able to do things better than a person ever could.

Take a look at our newest flickr set to marvel at a few 19^th century inventions from familiar to strange, and visit the State Library's Special Collections department to discover more wonderful illustrations in our books on patents, industry, and inventions.

Brown bag on the 2010 Census and the American Community Survey

Join us for a Brown Bag Lunch
on Thursday, October 25^th, 2012

State Library of Massachusetts

Room 442, State House

12 until 1:30 PM

Bring your lunch and join us to hear Alexandra Barker, Data Dissemination Specialist at the New York Regional Census Office, speak on the most current demographic and socioeconomic data for Massachusetts. She will speak specifically about the results from the 2010 Census and the American Community Survey which provide a picture of the population and the socioeconomic trends in the state. As part of the presentation, Mrs. Barker will go over the data resources available for you online, including economic and business data.

To register, please go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SV3RW8D

You may also register by calling the Reference Department at 617-727-2590 or by e-mailing to Reference.Department@state.ma.us 

Future Brown Bags will include:

• Thursday, November 15^th 
  Dr. Marcia Hohn, The Immigrant Learning Center, Massachusetts Immigrant Entrepreneurs
• Tuesday, December 11^th Dr. Beryl Rosenthal,  Executive Director, The Waterworks Museum, The History of Water in Massachusetts

Economic Report of the President

The economic report of the President has been produced since 1950.  It is an annual report written by the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and is released together with the report of the Council.  The report is issued by the Executive Office of the President. 

The report includes information about:

• annual numeric goals
• programs to carry out program objectives
• employment objectives for some of the labor force
• current and future trends; annual numerical goals about employment, production; real estate and Federal budget outlays.

Included in the subjects listed above are reports on:  tax policy; alternative energy; health and health care; credit; housing markets and export growth.

The volume contains over 100 tables of information with multiple years of analysis/statistics covered.  Each table starts in a specific year and covers time from that year to the present.  An example is below 

  

Table B-17. Real personal consumption expenditures, 1995-2010. Economic Report of the President, Transmitted to Congress, February 2011; House Document 112-2.

The report is available online at:  www.fdsys.gov.  Click on the icon on the right side of the page that says “browse collections.”  The Economic Report of the President is there from 1995 to the present.

The State Library holds paper copies of this publication as well as access to the online documents.  We invite you to room 341 of the State House to access this Federal document.  We are open Mondays through Fridays from 9 am to 5 pm.

Explore Online State Documents with DSpace

Did you know that many state publications are available full-text online?  The State Library maintains an online repository, commonly known as DSpace, which currently contains over 115,000 state documents, with more being added each week.

The majority of the documents in the online repository are the Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Court of Massachusetts. You may view the full text of all of the Acts and Resolves from 1692 to the present.  Other collections of interest include the Manual for the General Court (1858-present), the Massachusetts Election Statistics (1890-present), the Annual Reports of the Attorney General (1832-present), and the recently digitized Massachusetts Real Estate Atlases.

Navigating DSpace is simple due to the repository’s organizational structure. The documents in DSpace are organized first according to the name of the state agency that published the document, then according to the type of publication, such as annual reports, meeting minutes, or press releases, to name a few.  

If you aren’t familiar with the hierarchy of state agencies, don’t worry!  You can expand the list of state agency names by browsing the communities and collections. Then simply search (Ctrl-f) the list for whichever state agency you need. Keep in mind that DSpace only displays the five most recently uploaded publications in each collection.  To view all of the items in a collection, simply browse by issue date, author, or title.

Although not every state publication is available online, the State Library is dedicated to providing greater access to state publications electronically.  To meet this end, the State Library has several ongoing digitization projects, and the librarians at the State Library are continuously working to capture state documents as they are published online for permanent preservation in DSpace.  

If you have any questions about finding online publications in DSpace, please email the State Library at reference.department@state.ma.us or give us a call at 617-727-2590.

- The Marketing Committee