Month: March 2013

In an earlier post, I mentioned that we send our data (the digitized newspapers and their metadata) to the Library of Congress in batches. The Library of Congress asks us to give each batch a name. This can be anything we like, as long as the sequence is alphabetical. At the beginning of the project I decided to use Tennessee musician/singers’ names. The person didn’t have to be born in Tennessee, just as long as they had a strong connection with our state. We decided to continue this theme into Phase II. So here are the folks on whom we have bestowed the honour of having a TNDP batch named after them. Better than winning a Grammy?!

See if you can guess who they are (answers below).

If you managed to identify all of those people, you are truly a Tennessee music aficionado extraordinaire!

Answers: Arthur Q. Smith, Brownie McGhee, Charlie Hagaman, Dottie West, “Tennessee” Ernie Ford, Frank Smith, Gordon Stoker, Hubert Carter, Ida Cox, Jimmy Hartsook, Kay Starr, Leola Manning.

Happy St David’s Day!

According to Ayer’s American Newspaper Directory, there were several Welsh language newspapers available in the USA in 1880:

At one time, Scranton, Pa., was home to the largest Welsh population outside Wales. Our friends at the Pennsylvania Digital Newspaper Project tell me that some of the newspapers they have digitized for NDNP contain some Welsh language. A search on Chronicling America, yields several more reports about eisteddfods that were held in the US (see February 27 post).