The Gilded Age | eDesiderata

Tabbed

Overview

The Gilded Age collection brings together 53,000 pages of full text, photographs, songs for listening online, and other primary materials, along with video interviews and twenty-five critical documentary essays. Each documentary essay poses an interpretive question and then illuminates it with dozens of annotated primary documents, introductions, and essays. The critical documentary essays have been created by leading scholars in the field, including Samuel Thomas of Michigan State University, Christopher Reed of Roosevelt University, Kim Warren of the University of Kansas, and Daniel Thorp of Virginia Tech.

Provider:

Alexander Street Press

Posted:

Aug 6, 2015 12:33pm

Updated:

Aug 24, 2016 10:07am

Source

CRL reviews are based on independent research. Information is researched by CRL staff and other specialists at CRL libraries. See CRL Review for additional source notes.

Details

Collection Content

Subject Areas:

Arts and Humanities

Social Sciences

Resource Types:

Books

Photographs

Sound recordings

Television broadcasting

Transcription

Video recordings

Major Languages:

English

- Denotes data sourced directly from publisher

Content Details:


Topics covered	The key issues that shaped America in the late nineteenth century, including race and ethnicity, immigration, labor, women's rights, American Indians, political corruption, and monetary policy.
Geographic coverage	United States
Chronological coverage	1865-1902
Source format(s)	Paper, audio, video (Full text, photographs, songs, video interviews, and twenty-five critical documentary essays)
Total titles	351
Total pages	53,000
Major language (s)	English
Digital collection launch date	2007
Completion date	Complete
Collection ongoing	N
Update frequency	Complete
Available supplements	N

Specifications

Metadata:


MARC records available	Y
Creator of MARC records	Alexander Street
Source for obtaining MARC records	http://alexanderstreet.com/gilded-age-all-customers
Fee for MARC records	N
Subject authorities used	Controlled vocabularies for subjects are natural language, hierarchical terms (e.g., "Agriculture >> Crops >> Food crops" = three separate terms, with no subdivisions). Terms are intended to be used with post-coordinate searches (e.g., "Forest fires AND Insects”).
Name authorities used	Controlled vocabularies for names are based on AACR2 guidelines, with the addition of "flourish dates" when we could find no birth or death date for an individual ("Pacheco, Paulita, 1943-" or "Abbott, Edward, fl. 1763-1778").

Technical Platform:


Browser compatibility	Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher; Firefox 3.0 or higher
Authentication options	IP, user name and password, proxy,or referrer URL
Archiving solution (master files)	We use a third-party solution (library can request archival copy should ASP cease ability to provide the data)
Archiving solution (derivative files)	same
Available in web discovery tools	Y
Open url target	N
Federated searching, z39.50	N
Local host option	Y
Usage stats based on Counter code	N

Interface Tools:


Full text displayed	Y
Page images	61 images
Color images	Y / Nearly 100% are B/W or original sepia color.
Search full text	Y
Advanced search	Y
Search within results	Y
Limit results by dates and/or document types	Y
Display highlighted search terms	Y
Display snippet (search term in context)	Y
Relevance sorting	Y
Save searches	N
Download PDF	N
Download HTML	N
Print page	Y
Print full document	N
Export citations	N
Annotation tools	N
Cross-product searching	N
ILL permitted	Y
Text/data mining permitted	Y
Restrictions on use	Per license terms (authorized users defined, not to be reproduced for commercial purposes, etc.)

Terms and Provider Details

Terms:


Subscription option	Y
Purchase option	Y
Multiple year payments option	Y
Maintenance fees	Y
Hosting charges	Y
Provider notes	n/a

Provider:

Alexander Street Press

Website:

http://alexanderstreet.com/

Main Address:

3212 Duke Street

Alexandria, VA 22314

United States

CRL Review

Collection Content:

The Gilded Age provides access to 53,000 pages of full text, photographs, songs for listening online, video interviews, letters, cartoons, government documents, ephemera, and twenty-five critical documentary essays from scholars.

The database is organized around more than ten historical themes, such as:

Agriculture and rural life
Arts, culture, and leisure
Domestic life and families
Economics, labor, and commerce
Education and intellectual life
Gender, sexuality, and women
Government, law, and politics
Immigration, migration, and expansion
Race and ethnicity
Religion and spirituality
Science, technology, and medicine
Social progress and reform
Urban life
War and military life

This collection covers issues that affected America from 1865-1902, including race and ethnicity, immigration, labor, women's rights, American Indians, political corruption, and monetary policy.

Alexander Street Press reports that this database is regularly updated, with a large number of primary materials being gathered from a number of libraries, museums, and archives, including the Newberry Library, the Chicago Historical Society, and the Illinois State Library.

Delivery:

The interface includes Alexand Street Press' semantic indexing.

Terms:

The Gilded Age is available on the Web, either through one-time purchase of perpetual rights or through annual subscription. All prices are scaled to library budget and institutional size. A library that purchases perpetual rights will also receive an archival copy of the data.

CRL is only providing an offer for the one-time purchase of perpetual rights.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

The strengths of this database is the semantic indexing and the advanced search tool that allows user to search by: title, author, publisher, date, and document type (article, biography, critical documentary essay, diary, editorial, ephemera, essay/treatise, government/institutional documents, illustration/art work/photograph, interview, letter, memoir/autobiography, oral history, play, song, and speech). Users are also able to select the material type (audio, image, text, video). In addition, users are able to limit their search by selected terms by subject, such as: historical theme, event, person, place, or other topics.

Other strengths include the availability of static url links on all pages allowing users to return to that exact page or cite on documents, teaching resources, or on services such as WebCT and Blackboard. In addition, users are able to print pages of interest.

Sources

Sources for this review include information publicly posted or obtained directly from the publisher; data collected by CRL staff and specialists at CRL libraries; and examination of the digital collection when possible. Other sources are noted where cited. CRL continues to gather additional information on this resource and to solicit critical assessment.

Endnotes:

Most of the information found on this tab was taken from the vendor's description of the product.

CRL Offers & Status

Status	Current	Description
CRL Flagged	no	Potential interest to CRL community
Offer Pending	no	Currently a candidate for CRL offer
Active Offer	no	Currently offered for purchase or new subscription
Trial Access	no	Available for trial
Renewal Offer	no	Currently offered for renewal
Expired Offer	yes	Past offers
Inactive / Declined	no	No longer under consideration by CRL
Reviewed by CRL	yes	Evaluation available by CRL and community
Special Access	no	Member-only access available for a limited time

The complete offer and activity details for this resource are only available to CRL members.

Appendix

Bibliography for The Gilded Age

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