Digitized Book of the Week

http://www.archive.org/details/historyofeighthi00mcca
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This hidden gem found deep in the bowels of the Bookstacks, documents the history of the all African-American Eighth Illinois Volunteer Infantry; while there were other infantries of African-American soldiers in the late 1800s, the Eighth Illinois was the first to be led entirely by African American officers. The Eighth Illinois Volunteer Infantry was called by President McKinley to fight in Cuba during the Spanish American War. This volume is filled with photographs, biographical information, the names of all the men in the unit, and an historical account of their service.

http://hdl.handle.net/10111/UIUCOCA:peoriabookofvers00peor
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Over the years, some books have entered the UIUC Library’s holdings from personal collections donated to the Library or purchased by it. Sometimes those books contain personal memorabilia—autographs, letters from the author, old book reviews, and the like. In the case of The Peoria Book of Verse, a previous owner glued to one of the end sheets a woman’s photograph and a short verse dedicated to “Deirdre.” Perhaps the serious fellow whose own photograph is glued into the inside front cover? And do check out the inside back cover as well at the above URL!

http://www.archive.org/details/lamulatadramaori00cane
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Spanish born novelist, dramatist, and journalist Eva Canel (1857-1932), lived much of her life in Cuba, a country she loved fervently despite her opposition to Cuba's revolution to win its independence from Spain. An intensely political writer, Canel's La Mulata was the first of three plays she would write in her lifetime.

UIUC Library's copy of La Mulata was purchased during the 1960s as one piece of a larger collection of approximately 16,000 items relating to Spanish drama. Bound together in 669 volumes, and represented for over 30 years with a single brief bibliographic record in the Library's catalog, the collection was serendipitously "rediscovered" in the bowels of the Main Stacks by a library staff member last year. The Spanish Play Project seeks to catalog and digitize the collection, the contents of which fall into two general categories: 1) late eighteenth through mid-twentieth century primary source material; and 2) twentieth century secondary material, with the former far exceeding the latter. The primary sources include prompter’s copies; author-signed copies; author and composer signed copies (for some that were musical); late eighteenth and nineteenth-century comedias sueltas (Spanish equivalent of a chapbook); bilingual editions (usually Italian and Spanish); Catalan text and some were issued as serials. The marginalia, modifications for performance, signatures and stamps (such as from Spanish theatrical archives) that appear on many of the plays make them rare. Through internal library funding the Project has made great strides in assessing the collection and figuring out how best to treat it. The Library is in the process of writing a major grant to catalog all of the plays, a first step in getting them digitized.

http://www.archive.org/details/illinoiscollegeo00illi
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This week's featured book--Illinois College of Photography : Effingham, Illinois 1905-1906--was discovered in the UIUC Library's collection on the Internet Archive by a man from Effingham, who writes "I am currently renovating a Queen Anne home, built in 1892, that is the only surviving building of the Illinois College of Photography. The College is of major significance as it was the first international college of photography in the world. It also continued where others failed, spanning from the early 1890's until 1932. The college was attended by students from every state in the US, every province in Canada, and 52 foreign countries. I have been actively collecting and documenting the history of this home, which has aided in the renovation. I had found other books from the college, but yours was of major significance, because it was the oldest I had come across. It offered excellent insight about the home and college. I am extremely grateful to you for making this book available online, allowing me to learn more of my home's rich history."

http://hdl.handle.net/10111/UIUCOCA:fightingtraffici00bell
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In the early years of the 20th century, a moral panic broke out in urban America after Illinois-born George Kibbe Turner, a reporter and muckraker, wrote a sensational article in McClure's Magazine about white women being forced into prostitution by Asian and southern European immigrants. Turner's article fed on racial fears in post-emancipation America and led to a vigorous anti-prostitution movement in the 1910s. In 1910 Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act, also known as the Mann Act after James Mann, U.S. representative from Illinois who introduced it. Hiroyuki Matsubara, in The 1910s Anti-Prostitution Movement and the Transformation of American Political Culture, observed that "the forced sex labor of white women appeared to be the worst nightmare, or the reality, in the post-emancipation era. As if replacing black slaves, white women were dragged down by un-American intruders to a filthy corner of a city crowded with poor workers and immigrants. After the formal end of black slavery, Americans were now afraid of being confronted with white slavery." See also The Social Evil in Chicago (1911), The Social Menace of the Orient (1921), and Chicago's Black Traffic in White Women (1911).