News, announcements, updates, and happenings in the UVA Library

The Library’s new online resource “Gender: Identity and Social Change” examines the history of gender in the English-speaking world, beginning with coercive enforcement of gender roles in the nineteenth century and moving through twentieth century activism toward a more inclusive reality. The experiences of people, both famous and unsung, reveal how views of gender have impacted women’s suffrage, feminist movements, employment and the workplace, personal conduct and manners, and education and legislation.

Material in “Gender: Identity and Social Change” has been compiled from extensive international archival collections in Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia, showing the significant changes in perceptions of gender over time. Primary sources include records of women’s and men’s organizations and interest groups, advice literature and etiquette books, personal diaries and correspondence, pamphlets, speeches, newsletters, and newspaper clippings. The resource also makes available a rich selection of visual material, including photographs, illustrations, posters, scrapbooks, and objects that shed light on both key historical figures and ordinary people.

Primary documents in the collection cover the following topics and more:

• Women’s Suffrage — The fight for voting rights, including campaigns, activities, organizations, and pioneers of gender equality.
• Employment and Labor — Changing expectations in the workplace. The contrast between paid and unpaid labor, and the divide between public and private work environments.
• Feminism — Feminist activism, which went from challenging gender inequality in the nineteenth century to demanding equality in employment and education in the 1960s.
• Legislation and Legal Cases — The fight for equality in the courts. Bills and acts that shed light on the legal history of women’s suffrage.
• Government and Politics — Changes to traditional gender roles traced through activism for positive change. Includes correspondence, reports, and first-hand accounts.
• Leisure and Entertainment — Periodicals, books, and records of how leisure activities that were considered appropriate for a specific gender have shifted over time.
• Education and Training — Male and female perspectives on both formal and informal education and how opportunities were defined by gender.
• Conduct and Politeness — Nineteenth century advice literature and etiquette books defining proper conduct for different genders, such as “How to stand correctly,” “How to Serve a Dainty Tea,” and “Advice to young men on their duties and conduct in life.”
• Sex and Sexuality — Gender, physical relations, sexual orientation, and self-expression. The response of different segments of society to sex, sexuality, and topics which were considered taboo.
• The Body — Gendered perceptions of the body that analyze and challenge traditional gender roles: how we dress our bodies, abortion, and more.

Other materials in the resource include essays, biographies, and video interviews of leading academics, adding background and context to the primary sources, and a chronology that traces events on a timeline. Find out about the jailing of John Stuart Mill in 1823 for distributing pamphlets on birth control, about Oberlin College in Ohio becoming the first college in the United States to admit men and women together in 1833, or that a union run completely by female textile workers petitioned the Massachusetts General Court in 1845 demanding a 10-hour workday.

Guest post by Fine Arts Library Public Service Manager April Baker

Just off Rugby Road and behind the Fralin Museum of Art, the Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library is located in Campbell Hall, home to UVA’s School of Architecture. Built in 1970, Campbell Hall was recently added to the Virginia Landmarks Registry. The Fine Arts Library, with its sunny spaces lit by floor-to-ceiling windows, is where artists, architects, dancers, actors, art historians, and students come to study and meet.

Five Reasons to visit the Fine Arts Library:

1. Accessibility to all. Recent renovations have added gender-inclusive, wheel-chair accessible restrooms to the library’s main and second floors! All four bathrooms are spacious and private with single-user locks. While there is no elevator, there is wheelchair access to the second floor through the Architecture School.
2. Reservable spaces. Spaces are available for study groups, job interviews, planning sessions, consultations, practicing skits, and working on art projects. In the Materials Collection Room you can spread out your project work, study architectural building materials, or just meet up with friends. The Conference Room (mini-board room) is ideal for group study and club meetings. And the R-Lab is a creative collaborative space perfect for forums, presentations, and group discussions.
3. Robust collection. New books arrive daily — current periodicals with timely scholarship in the areas of art, architecture, urban planning, archeology, and indigenous studies, and large folio volumes containing glorious images. Architectural building materials (including design samples, from flooring to insulation to windows to green insulation blocks made from dead fungi) are housed in the Materials Collection room, and the library’s reference section contains the complete “Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum,” detailing the shapes of vases.
4. Creative tools. The library has high-end scanners connected to Macs equipped with Reaper and Unity programs (useful in creating video games and general visual rendering), and the Harris Matrix program for archeologists diagraming stratum.
5. Study carrels for graduate students. The Fine Arts Library has 44 reservable study carrels that may be checked out for the academic year and can be renewed each year. These assigned desks are used by grad students to study and store books. There are carrels which are still available for the spring semester!

Have a research question? Please feel free to make an appointment with Research Librarian for Architecture Rebecca A. Coleman, or Art, Archaeology, Classics, and Indigenous Studies Librarian Lucie Stylianopoulos. And do come and visit, whatever you are studying, and discover why you just might make Fiske Kimball your personal go-to library! See maps and directions to all Library locations.

November is Native American Heritage Month! Follow the conversation below between Librarian for African American and African Studies Katrina Spencer and other Library staff discussing recommended titles from the Library collection about the histories, cultures, lands, and politics of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. For research guidance and queries about Indigenous groups, visit the UVA Library’s Native American & Indigenous Studies (NAIS) research guide or contact our Librarian for Art, Archaeology, & Indigenous Studies, Lucie Wall Stylianopoulos.

Katrina Spencer, Librarian for African American & African Studies: Hey, Lucie, tell us about some of the notable works in our collection that address Indigenous Studies.

Lucie Wall Stylianopoulos, Librarian for Art, Archaeology, & Indigenous Studies: I’d like to share a couple!  First, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants" (available in print and e-book formats). Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and the SUNY Distinguished Teaching Fellow of Environmental Biology. She describes herself as a “traveler between scientific and traditional ways,” successfully interweaving settler scientific method and the Indigenous knowledge of her family’s story. In one chapter, for example, Wall Kimmerer illustrates the role of pecan trees in sustaining her resilient, dispossessed ancestors, telling a delightful story of how the pecan trees hold a council to discuss the system of “mast fruiting” (periodic heavy production of pecan nuts) which ensures mutual survival of people and trees. If the scientific method can be turned into the art of poetry, this book is one of the best examples. The rich vignettes of “Braiding Sweetgrass” seamlessly guide the reader without giving away the secret that this is a study of one of the most important fields in STEM research today.

Second, noted anthropologist Jefferey Hantman, who taught at UVA, collaborated with the Monacan Nation (on whose land the University was built) to write "Monacan Millenium," an authoritative resource on one of the largest federally recognized Indigenous groups in what we now know as Virginia. Hantman painstakingly reviewed and amassed considerable archival evidence while successfully interweaving the Monacan historical record with that of the colonizers in Virginia. His book clarifies the archaeological evidence, unraveling the historical tales from Jamestown and relating the Monacan story to events which have shaped the Virginia and United States historical myth.

Katrina: Wow. So “Braiding Sweetgrass” defies genre and simple categorization, and “Monacan Millennium” reveals some of UVA’s history. I agree it should be required reading for all UVA affiliates. Keith, you’re a history specialist. What work do you want to feature this month?

Keith Weimer, Librarian for History, Politics, and Religious Studies: Lisa Brooks’ "Our Beloved Kin," discusses “King Philip’s War” (1675-77), which was one of the most important conflicts of the 17th century. It seriously threatened the New England colonies and devastated Indigenous communities in the region. The Wabanaki author and historian, whose community was embroiled in the conflict, starts the book by thoroughly reinterpreting the first century of Indian-white relations in New England. I have read a number of books about this period and conflicts between Native Americans and British settlers, including, for example, Francis Jennings’ "The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest," which upends the legend of the Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers' by looking critically at the colonizers’ use of their own source material. But Brooks gave me a much fuller picture of the settlers’ quest to use law and force to control all the land — a quest implicit among the Pilgrim Fathers before they ever sat down for the first Thanksgiving. The author also used Indigenous world views and oral histories to interpret colonial sources for a completely fresh perspective on the early history of what became the United States.

Katrina: You all are really making my reading lists quite a bit longer! There’s an endless amount to learn. Chris, as the liaison to American Studies, I know you’ll have a worthy title to recommend. What do you have for us?

Chris Ruotolo, Director of Research in the Arts and Humanities and Liaison to American Studies: I do! I’ve been reading "When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through," a new poetry anthology edited by current United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. This broad-ranging collection features works by poets from over ninety tribal nations across the U.S., from the 17th century to the present day. Harjo has chosen to arrange the poems by geographic region, which underscores how deeply much of the poetry engages with the land — both in terms of its natural imagery, and in its recurring themes of spiritual rootedness, as well as loss, displacement, and resistance. Although most of the poems in the collection are written in English, Harjo’s introductory essay describes how the poems reflect native language constructs and oral traditions, creating a varied cultural record that is a distinct yet essential part of a shared canon of literature. The Monacan Nation, on whose ancestral land UVA stands, is represented by two poems by the late Karenne Wood, who was the first Monacan Indian to earn a Ph.D. at UVA.

Katrina: I’m mesmerized. What an ambitious work with such a wide scope! So many voices mingling together in one space. And you, Leigh, tell us about the title that studies Indigeneity that you most recently got to know.

Leigh Rockey, Video Collections Librarian: Sure! "Say We Are Nations," edited by Daniel M. Cobb, presents Indigenous voices from 1887 to 2015 through 55 short primary sources: letters, congressional testimony, interviews, essays, poems, and more. Those of us who are not historians appreciate Cobb's brief comments that introduce each resource, setting the documents within the context of the times but not imposing himself on the emerging narrative. The documents are very alive — we can read not only frustration and pain in them, but joy and humor. We can also perceive the diversity of opinions among the various Indigenous groups which comprise many nations. The poet Lyla June Johnston gets the last word: “So please do not call me an American / please do not even call me a Native American / please, I beg you, call me human.”

What about you, Katrina? Is there a title you have on your mind?

Katrina: The graphic novel "Paying the Land" by Joe Sacco is very informative about land rights in what we now know as northwestern Canada. Sacco is well known for traveling and creating comics that function as journalism documenting contemporary conflicts. In this work, Sacco tells the history of the Dene people and their intimate relationship with and reliance upon the land. He highlights how plans to extract resources from the land are culturally disruptive and threatening to traditional ways of life. The artwork is in black-and-white and covers hundreds of years of history. I recommend it to anyone trying to better understand what is at stake when it comes to land rights for Indigenous groups. Collectively, these titles will certainly help us review how North America, as we now know it, came to be, and how Indigenous cultural practices and ways of life have survived centuries of sanctioned genocide and oppression. I have a number of titles to add to my reading list!

The Library is now offering full online access to the New York Times to everyone in the University community!

Create a FREE account and you’ll get all the Times’ content, including world news, politics, opinion, business, the arts, book reviews, the New York Times Magazine, as well as Spanish and Chinese editions and hundreds of articles published in other languages. To create your account from off-Grounds locations, users need to have their VPN turned on. 

Once your account is created, the VPN is no longer needed.

This valuable resource, located in the Library’s A-Z Databases, offers not only current issues but a complete archive from when the paper started in 1851 to the present, a distinguished history (including 132 Pulitzer Prizes for journalism) which has established the Times as an authoritative news source, currently ranking 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the United States

You can access the recent Times archive (with full-text issues extending back to 2003) by typing “archive” in the website’s search box. Earlier material can be found by expanding the contents menu (three horizontal lines in the upper left-hand corner of the Times homepage). Click “More” to expand it further and select “Times Machine,” which will open access to every New York Times newspaper published before December 31, 2002.

The archive allows you to experience history as it happened, starting in 1851 — from calls for slavery’s abolition to the Civil War, from two world wars to the Civil Rights movement, from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the COVID-19 pandemic. You will see how journalistic styles and standards have evolved over time, and how the past can sometimes seem eerily similar to the present.

Accounts are available to active students, faculty, and staff with a virginia.edu email account.

Guest post by UVA Librarian for Music & the Performing Arts Amy Hunsaker

The Music Library has been described as a fishbowl, with its Byzantine-inspired blue carpet squares and arched ceilings. It is very quiet there, except for music that occasionally wafts through from a rehearsal or music lecture. Quirky, hidden study spaces are tucked behind walls of books. It is perhaps the most unique library on Grounds and is worth a visit — if you can find it.

Located in the basement of Old Cabell Hall (look for the signs in the stairwell from the central lobby), the Music Library was carved out of a space that was never meant to be visited by the public. The area originally hosted a coal furnace rather than people, so the bricks in the vaulted ceiling remain bare in contrast to other nicely finished interior domes on Grounds. The ceiling has been painted white, but visitors can clearly see the perfectly stacked bricks, designed to be fireproof and last forever. The lower floor stacks area is mostly round, but the shelving is rectangular, creating curious nooks and crannies.

The Music Library currently provides access to more than 150,000 books, study scores, critical editions, and sound recordings. One of our primary services to the University is providing music scores, or sheet music. Any student, regardless of their major, can check out music written for piano, guitar, trumpet, marimba, etc. for practice or performance.

We have thousands of scores, including Broadway folios, operas, modern classical music, folk music, symphonies, chamber music, rock music, and more. If there is music you need or want and we don’t have it, we will either order a copy for the Music Library or help you borrow it from another library. We also provide access to streaming music and videos through Virgo, and there are thousands of CDs and LPs that you can check out. We sometimes host concerts and meetings, and everyone is welcome to come and study. To explore our music resources in more detail, visit the Music Subject Guide. For more information, you can Ask a librarian or phone us at (434) 924-7041.

The Music Library houses an impressive number of music resources shoehorned into a very old, unusual space. It has a unique vibe; come and see if it’s your vibe!

There have been a lot of news stories in the past few years about the “big deals,” academic publishing, and its relationship to journal access in higher education, including here at UVA. And it’s true: what’s happening now is, well, a big deal; one that will affect the way we publish and read for decades to come. This article focuses on three aspects: tools you can download and utilize to make for easier access, processes we’ve put in place on the back end to ensure your access is uninterrupted, and opportunities that have come from this unique moment. If you’re new to this effort, you could start with the Library’s information about Sustainable Scholarship, see recent news stories about the “big deals,” or if you’re familiar and ready for next steps you can jump straight into how you can help.

Our key point today, however, is that the UVA Library is ready and committed to provide continued access to a world of research materials, no matter what.

We’ve been preparing for these transitions for years, and we have infrastructure in place to help you access what you need, when you need it, regardless of contract status or publisher arrangements of any given moment.

Tools to ensure smooth access to academic journals at UVA

Millions of items are discoverable though Virgo, the Library’s catalog — but millions more are harder to uncover since they’re packaged with journals or databases. There are a few tools you can use to quickly gain or request access to academic material on the web, whether you uncover it in Virgo or beyond.

Libkey Nomad Browser Extension locates subscribed or open access full-text articles when you view an article webpage. If we don’t have access to the article, it prepares a detailed ILL request for you to submit. This is one of the quickest and most powerful tools for finding and accessing articles.

The Reload@UVA button is a quick way to see academic material through UVA’s proxy; letting you quickly download articles the Library subscribes to. It can be used in a laptop/desktop browser, or mobile device.

And what about Google Scholar? Adding UVA Library in your Google Scholar settings means faster and more accurate access. Read more about getting the most from Google Scholar.

Want more? The Accessing Electronic Resources Guide will take you through these options and more.

Libraries are building and fortifying reliable pipelines to academic content, so you can get what you need

Library professionals are well-versed in designing information pipelines that can adjust as providers, technologies, and user needs change. Librarians work hard to insulate patrons from the internal workings: from your perspective, access should ideally be pretty much seamless. On the back end, we’re hard at work exploring new possibilities, seeking efficiencies to existing processes, and building collaborative relationships to ensure access at the University of Virginia and across the state. Three examples of this work are Reprints Desk, Rapid ILL, and VIVA partnerships.

Reprints Desk is a clearinghouse that lets Library staff gain prompt access to material at the article and chapter level, directly from the providers. The power of Reprints Desk is that it empowers the Library to pay for exactly what is needed at any given time. Funds saved by avoiding larger package deals can thus go much farther, and be invested in high-priority collecting areas, whether those are demand-based or equity-based. The next section, about opportunities from this present moment, goes into more detail about what this can really mean for the future of Library collections.

RapidILL is another tool that provides prompt access to materials which may not be owned by UVA, but are owned by other institutions participating in this digital interlibrary loan program. At its heart, RapidILL is a database UVA pays to access, which allows Library interlibrary loan staff to identify sources for material we do not own, and to rapidly request and acquire the loan after a patron makes a request. Institutions participating in RapidILL agree to key expectations about sharing content and speed of delivery, making RapidILL a powerful force for quick access to content of all types.

Finally, the VIVA consortium, a state-wide partnership among academic libraries, has enabled a collective opportunity to utilize funding models for electronic access, such as through RapidILL. Building these connections in recent years has led to quicker collaboration and shared access strategies across the state of Virginia. Benefits from this growing consortium will benefit Library visitors for many years to come.

Opportunities, thanks to this unique moment

These major shifts in publishing and subscription practices have inspired a time of invention and opportunity.

The UVA Library has redoubled efforts with Open Educational Resources, and Library subject liaisons are well-versed in helping instructors utilize these materials in the classroom.

The Library is more able than ever to support publishing thanks to Aperio, UVA’s peer-reviewed open access scholarly press. Work with Aperio to openly publish your journals, monographs, textbooks, Open Educational Resources, and more.

Finally, the funds saved from re-thinking the Big Deals mean that libraries can afford additional investment in collections. The UVA Library has put particular emphasis on materials that increase the diversity of UVA’s collection, building on inclusion initiatives throughout the Library. Recent acquisitions include the SNCC Digital Gateway, “Diversity in the Modern World,” “Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings,” and many, many more.

Need something? We have you covered.

In the end, we at the Library do hope you’ll keep an eye on changes in publishing and watch for ways you can help transform the industry for the better. But the bottom line is, no matter the current or future status of big deals, contracts, and publishing in general, we have tools and expertise to get you what you need.

Ready to get started? Ask a Librarian or contact your subject liaison to learn more.

The Library has the entire backfile of Rolling Stone magazine in the Rolling Stone Archive — now available in the Library’s A-Z Databases list from its beginning to the present: full-color scans, full-page content, cover-to-cover, including articles, editorials, and advertisements, with article-level indexing and searchable text.

Rolling Stone is a key resource and guide to understanding pop culture changes in music, film, television, and entertainment — from John Lennon to Billie Eilish, from Aretha Franklin to Beyonce, from the conceptual themes and cover art of vinyl albums to individual digital files and back to vinyl again.

Rolling Stone is also a window on history. At the time of the magazine’s launch in November of 1967, it sought to appeal to a generation that defied middle-class conventions and embraced the counterculture rising from the Vietnam-era peace movement. In later issues, you can trace changes in content as the magazine evolved to become more at ease with corporate boardrooms and mainstream politics. Researchers will find a wealth of primary source material illuminating 20th and 21st century history, politics, music, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, and more!

Stories from a half century ago still resonate, such as “gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan” about the killing of Los Angeles Times reporter Ruben Salazar in an LA County police “sweep of more than 7000 people in (Laguna) Park” after the peaceful National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War. Police accounts of Salazar being struck by random fire from street snipers fell apart after sworn testimony of witnesses revealed that Salazar was hit in the head by a shell fired into a bar “by a cop with a deadly tear gas bazooka.”

Other historic items include:

• 27 installments of what would become Tom Wolfe’s novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities”.
• Photographs by legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz — Whoopi Goldberg in a bathtub filled with milk, John Lennon curled naked, cuddling on a bed with his fully clothed wife Yoko Ono only five hours before he was shot dead by Mark David Chapman.
• An early feature on the then-mysterious and deadly AIDS virus.

Find more iconic material in the Rolling Stone Archive today!

- Guest post by UVA Library Special Collections Conservator Sue Donovan

On September 12, 2020, the time capsule underneath the “At Ready”/“Johnny Reb” statue in front of the Albemarle County Courthouse came out of the ground after crews had carefully removed the tons of granite and bronze sitting over it. The time capsule, a copper box containing papers, books, and other artifacts, had been placed into a hole in the concrete foundation. The foundation had expanded over time, pressing in on the sides of the thin copper box, and causing the box lid to pop off. This meant that the time capsule had been soaking in groundwater since slightly after it was buried in 1909. Silt from the groundwater colored the water brown, coated the exterior of the contents, and effectively acted as an adhesive between the surfaces of once-distinct books and rosters. As the water level rose, the contents of the time capsule became bathed in a malignant microcosm perpetuated by a mixture of the inherent acidity of the paper, the metal of the box itself, and nature’s ultimate solvent: water.

Unlike paper made from rags prior to the 1850s, most paper made with wood pulp has very short fibers and is inherently acidic. The paper in the time capsule simply did not have the structural integrity to withstand over a century of immersion in dirty, acidic water. Using strips of non-woven polyester and the capillary action of the wet pages, however, some sections of the severely damaged paper could be peeled apart to reveal less-damaged text in the middle of the piles. In addition to this paper evidence, a small flag, a silk ribbon, and three metal commemorative badges were salvaged from the time capsule, while three bullets and two small marbles were recovered from on top of the lid of the copper box.

The bullets, copper box, and badges were analyzed by archaeological conservators at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Interestingly, while the bullets were collected from a local battlefield and placed under a monument to a Confederate soldier, they were determined to be Union bullets based on the date and location of manufacture.

While the time capsule and its contents await a permanent storage solution, they are being stored in a low humidity environment to prevent further deterioration. The few paper-based items able to be peeled apart were air dried flat, with the exception of two slightly thicker sections that were sent to the UVA Library Preservation freezer.

According to the dedication printed in The Daily Progress on March 15, 1909, the contents of the time capsule were not meant to be seen again “until the angel Gabriel shall put one foot on the land and one in the sea, and proclaim that ‘time shall be no more.’”  While this did not occur, the inhospitable environment underneath the monument, which submerged the time capsule for decades in acidic water and silt, has indeed erased some of the contents for eternity.

Progress on the time capsule continues, and much information continues to be discovered about the contents. Please stayed tuned for more updates on the progress of this project.

The Library online resource "Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876" features publications from 22 islands, covering 150 years of Caribbean history (most of the 18th and 19th centuries) in more than 140 fully searchable titles. These documents provide valuable insights into the islands’ sugar cane plantocracies and the traffic in African lives that fueled the empires of colonizing countries England, Spain, France, and Denmark.

"Caribbean Newspapers" is an essential source for research in:

• colonial history
• international commerce
• the international slave trade
• the African diaspora

These momentous years saw the beginning of the end of European control, and saw enslaved people become the leaders of independent nations. The defeat of Napoleon’s forces by the enslaved population of Haiti in 1804 established the first independent nation of Latin America, the first country to abolish slavery, and the only state in history founded by a slave revolt. In Jamaica, Jack Sharpe’s Christmas 1831 rebellion and the international backlash against the brutal reprisals that took an estimated 500 Black lives paved the way to emancipation in 1838.

From the "Weekly Jamaica Courant," 30 July 1718:

On Saturday last arrived the Sloop Edward and Sarah … from the Coast of Affrica, with … 100 Gold Coast Negroe Slaves, Consign’d to Mr. John Major, late of Kingston, Merchant ...

From the "Jamaica Gazette," 3 Jan. 1765:

Run-away about four months ago, a Negro Man, named DREADNOUGHT … it’s supposed he has been carried away by some of the vessels going to the Main … as he is a good sailor Negro … I do promise a Reward of Thirty Pistoles to any white person upon conviction, or Four Pistoles Reward to any Person that will bring him … He speaks good French and English.

From the "Jamaica Watchman," 7 Jan. 1832:

Do they suppose they would be allowed to burn down the properties of their owners, and go unpunished? … No. The bullet or the bayonet will terminate their existence …

New! The Library offers full issues of Time and Life magazine online, cover to cover with all pictures and ads intact. Click “Research” at the top of the Library homepage. Look in the A–Z list of online resources to find the Time Magazine Archive or Life Magazine Archive. At the EBSCO search page, type search terms. All results will be from that publication.

You’ll have access to Time and Life from their earliest issues through the year 2000, available in a variety of formats. Time has digital full text and archival quality PDF scans you can download, as well as audio for the visually impaired. Image-rich Life has PDF scans, allowing you to read articles and view images as they appeared when the magazines first hit newsstands—ads and photos will enrich research into pop culture and media studies.

These articles depict history in the making, when outcomes were far from certain. In Time, President Harry S. Truman rails against the tactics employed by opponents of his “Fair Deal”: “I am going to keep right on working for better houses, better schools … and I don’t intend to be scared away by anybody who calls that program socialism” (“The Hired Man.” Time, 22 May 1950). In another issue, the military dismisses warnings of the Atomic Energy Commission that atomic fallout could have deadly consequences as “based on the worst possible conditions, i.e., they assume that no one would take protective measures … old and simple steps are highly effective against the new and horrible peril …” (“The Fatal Fall-Out.” Time, 28 Feb.1955)

Images in Life capture police violence against marchers for civil rights in Selma, AL. The U.S. Attorney General urged Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to cancel a second march but “he simply wouldn’t budge … ‘I had been agonizing and I made my choice,’ he said. ‘I decided it is better to die on the highway than to make a butchery of my conscience.'” (Douglas, Paul H. Life, 19 Mar. 1965, “Selma: Beatings start the Savage Season”)