Appalachian Tales

June 22, 2006 11:07 AM

The Digital Library of Appalachia presents an online collection of music files, images, literature, and scanned documents supplied by twelve regional college libraries.
posted by Miko (17 comments total)

Whoah. Bookmarked. Awesome.
posted by jokeefe at 11:24 AM on June 22, 2006

Holy Crap:

There goes the rest of my afternoon.

Excellent resource Miko.
posted by timsteil at 11:51 AM on June 22, 2006

that is incredible. Thank you!
posted by pablocham at 12:00 PM on June 22, 2006

Very neat!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:19 PM on June 22, 2006

Holy Crow! Thanks!
posted by mrs.pants at 12:34 PM on June 22, 2006

Outstanding. Thank you Miko. CONTENTdm construct the best digital repositories. Is this brand new? As a digilibrary junkie I'm certain I've never seen this and I make it a point to hang out at Cdm every month or so. In fact I've never seen any of the contributing libraries. So I'm happy. Cheers.
posted by peacay at 1:06 PM on June 22, 2006

Wow... thanks for posting this!
posted by bryghtrose at 1:07 PM on June 22, 2006

Very nice, thanks!
posted by safetyfork at 1:09 PM on June 22, 2006

This made my day. Thank you.
posted by horsemuth at 1:10 PM on June 22, 2006

Glad y'all like. I, too, can happily waste a day paging through online digital collections. They're definitely one of the best uses of internet technology ever imagined. Peacay, I honestly don't know how long it's been online. I came across it the back way today while researching a song, or I wouldn't have found it!
posted by Miko at 1:34 PM on June 22, 2006

woot!
posted by Busithoth at 1:42 PM on June 22, 2006

Yay! Great waste of time!
posted by marxchivist at 2:07 PM on June 22, 2006

I've been scouring the interweb for old-timey music/bluegrass years.

You've just handed me the keys to the gold mine! Thank you.
posted by snsranch at 4:30 PM on June 22, 2006

Thanks for the link! I was surprised by the contributing libraries, myself. I recognized only a few of them, where as I was expecting Appalachian State University or the U of Kentucky or West Virginia or Virginia Tech.

Speaking of which, many of those schools do have some online offerings through their libraries for some of the same subject areas.

For those who want something to hold in their hands, the University of Tennessee Press has released The Encyclopedia of Appalachia.
posted by Atreides at 4:36 PM on June 22, 2006

Awesome post, this is exactly the kind of post I joined Metafilter for. (Came for the links, stayed for the snark.)
posted by LarryC at 6:32 PM on June 22, 2006

Another Appalachia archive here.
posted by maggieb at 8:08 AM on June 23, 2006

snsranch, you probably already know this, but there's a lot of old-time and related music available on the Library of Congress' American Memory site. Here's the reference page for culture and folklife, which contains some finding aids. Southern Mosaic and the Henry Reed collection are particularly good for what you're looking for, but there are lots of other great collections you can listen to online.

Thanks, Maggieb, another great link!
posted by Miko at 8:55 AM on June 23, 2006