Started in 1997, Archipelago offers up a farrago of poetry, fiction, photo collages, and other such artistic endeavors once (sometimes twice) a year. It's a delight to learn about, and interested parties will appreciate looking over their most recent offerings. Of course, they won't want to stop at the latest material, as they can also delve into their online archive. To give curious parties a...

Based at the Louisiana State University, the Archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore was started in 1974, and it remains the most comprehensive repository of recorded and transcribed materials in French in Louisiana. This digital collection from the Louisiana Digital Library project allows visitors to listen and learn about various ballads, folktales, and jokes in French, Creole, and English. Some...

Telling the story of the Sonora region through primary documents has often vexed researchers because many of these documents are held in three separate institutions. Recently, these three institutions teamed up to create a digital archive which contains key documents from these collections. The project was supported by a grant to the University of Arizona Library from the Institute of Museum and...

The Australian War Memorial site has worked diligently over the past several years to add to their rather nice online collections, and this particular addition is quite a find. It consists of excerpts from diaries from those who served Australia during the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, and in the South East Asian conflicts. The homepage for these diaries includes a brief...

The web makes finding reference works rather simple, and Bartleby.com has been kind enough over the past few years to put more than a healthy offering of their publications online at no cost to voracious readers and the generally curious. On this corner of their site they have brought together over one hundred popular nonfiction works. Visitors can meander through "The World's Famous Orations",...

With its use of alliterative verse and rousing subject matter, the epic poem Beowulf has been adored and analyzed for over a millennium. The poem was originally composed in Old English, and it has been translated into dozens of languages over the centuries. Generally, translators have attempted to reproduce one or more of its features or qualities at the expense of others. This particular...

The world of hard-boiled crime fiction has been around for many decades, and a number of magazines sprung up in the 1920s to fulfill the growing demand for such hoary stories and tales. One such magazine was Black Mask, which was launched in April 1920 by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. The magazine quickly garnered attention, and it was also the first magazine to publish the work of Dashiel...

Unless one has a penchant for the history of Australian exploration or the 1985 film "Burke and Wills", they may not be familiar with the personages of Robert O'Hara Burke and his third in command, William John Wills. In 1860, they set forth from the city of Victoria on their way to explore their way across the continent of Australia. While the expedition successfully crossed the continent, some...

For decades, James Arthur Wood Jr. collected original cartoon art, and he also was an editorial cartoonist as well during his long career. After amassing a large collection of original drawings by various cartoon artists, he kindly donated his collection to the Library of Congress. Recently, staff members at the Library created this very nice online collection that contains a selection of these...

Back in the days of the dime novel, these tawdry tomes would be passed around to be shared with friends and those who enjoyed light fare. This digital collection from Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library brings together eight remarkable collections of items that include non-fiction titles, scholarship on dime novels, and beautiful covers and illustrations. One rather curious and colorful...