August 19, 2009 - The Newberry Library is proud to announce that its newest digital collection, Daily Life Along the Railroads: Mid-Twentieth Century Images of the Rural and Urban Midwest, is ready for use.
The Newberry holds an extensive archive of Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CB&Q) materials which document 19th-century operations of the railroad, the social and economic development of the regions served by the Chicago-based company, as well as the little-known 20th-century correspondence, promotional pamphlets, and photography related to the company's 1955 centennial celebration.
In the 1940s the CB&Q hired well-known photojournalists Esther Bubley and Russell Lee to document the railroad's impact through a pictorial social history. Bubley and Lee shot over 3,000 pictures of life in the Midwest, Great Plains and Mountain States. Ten years ago, these 3,000 negatives were discovered in the Newberry's unprocessed archives. While a selection of these photographs was compiled in 1949 for the book Granger Country: a Pictorial Social History of the Burlington Railroad, the majority have never been published. Through a 2009 Library and Technology Services Act (LSTA) grant, the Newberry has been able to digitize a selection of these photographs, concentrating on those taken in Illinois and the Midwest.
Daily Life Along the Railroads is available at: http://collections.carli.illinois.edu.
Funding for this grant was awarded by the Illinois State Library (ISL), a Department of the Office of Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), under the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).