Primary sources from the American Colonies…

It’s November, and in the United States that means the start of the holiday season with Thanksgiving. It is impossible to celebrate Thanksgiving without acknowledging the role of the Native Americans in that first feast.

I have long been fascinated by ephemera as a window into the past. And with Thanksgiving coming up, I thought it would be fun to look at food-related ephemera. To that end, I’ve found some digitized collections of menus, pamphlets, and other culinary items.

As a librarian, I am a HUGE fan of Worldcat and think it is sadly underutilized by non-librarians.

At this point, my Gen-X skepticism has turned into a reluctance to trust anyone or anything I see in the media. I expect I’m not alone in this.

If you are among the millions of people affected by the delay of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, or if you want to help those who are affected, this blog post is for you.

How did the holiday go from pagan festival to party time? And how did Gilded Age Halloween socials become children’s trick-or-treating?

No spooky-season blog series would be complete without mention of history’s real-life witch trials. In this post we will visit digital archival collections to learn about the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts and the witch trials in Early Modern Scotland.

A deep dive into the Film Collections on Internet Archive.

Creepy. Eerie. Unsettling. Why do some things that we would normally love give us shivers up our spines?