August 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the mother of contemporary music festivals: Woodstock. Held over three days in 1969, the festival featured three-days of performances for folk and rock artists like Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. The legacy of the festival was cemented by the Woodstock documentary and a song of the same name by folk luminary, Joni Mitchell. That’s a lot of talk about Woodstock when the festival wasn’t actually held there. Woodstock the event was actually held in Bethel, a neighboring town in upstate New York. Woodstock itself wasn’t even considered as a site for the festival. According to Woodstock the Oral History (1989) the only connection between the concert and the town is that the event’s promoters originally considered building a music studio in Woodstock, NY and incorporated under the name Woodstock Ventures. So what about the other Woodstock? Though it didn’t host the eponymous music festival, Woodstock, NY had been home to a thriving art colony since the early 1900s.
Category: Collection Highlights
This blog post was written by G. Goldberg, student at Smith College and Summer 2019 intern in the Smithsonian Libraries Research Annex. Interning at the Smithsonian Libraries Research Annex (SLRA) more »
This blog post is part of a series from Smithsonian Libraries highlighting Unearthed, a new collection of paleobiology literature in Biodiversity Heritage Library curated by Smithsonian Libraries in celebration of the opening of more »
Would you guess burglar alarms existed in the 19th Century? Though not as sophisticated as those of today, burglar and fire alarms did exist, as we can learn from this trade catalog.
The patron saint of both printers and brewers is Aurelius Augustine, born in 354 CE in present-day Algeria. He studied and taught philosophy and rhetoric there and in Carthage, Rome more »
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Man’s first steps on the moon, and across the United States and around the world, organizations and media outlets are exploring creative ways more »
This year, 2019, is the Smithsonian Year of Music, so how about looking at some music-related material in the Trade Literature Collection? In February, we highlighted mandolins and harmonicas. This month, let’s look at a trade catalog advertising harps.