Houston Cole Library Begins Collaborative Digital Project

3 February 2005 — Jacksonville State University's Houston Cole Library has begun its contribution to Alabama’s first statewide digital repository, Alabama Mosaic (www.alabamamosaic.org). 

The Alabama Mosaic Web site houses The Cornerstone Project, a unique collection of digitally accessible manuscripts, images, music, and other primary resources related to Alabama history.  The materials included in The Cornerstone Project have been digitized from the special collections of Alabama libraries, archives, historical societies, and other repositories.  The project was made possible through the efforts of the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries (NAAL) consortium, of which Houston Cole Library is a member. 

NAAL received funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that provides grants to libraries and museums.  Other NAAL participants in the project include The University of Alabama, Auburn University, UAB, UAH, and many others.  The JSU Archaeology/Anthropology Department’s Southeastern Indian Research Center will also be involved in the project, contributing materials concerning Alabama land areas ceded by Native Americans from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. 

The Houston Cole Library contributed its first record to the site this week, making Effie White Sawyer’s The First Hundred Years: the History of Jacksonville State University, 1883-1983 available in digital format.  Many more records will follow as the Library digitizes “The Harry Strange Collection of Alabamiana,” which consists of more than 200 items relating to early 1800s Alabama history.  The addition of new resources to Alabama Mosaic will be ongoing as JSU and other institutions around the state digitize their unique collections in order to benefit students, teachers, and researchers.  

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