What's New

Showcase

January 2007

This brand new edition of In the First Person brings you more personal voices from all over the world.

We are working hard to bring more global perspectives into this massive index. We are currently collecting English language content from continents such as Europe, Australia, and South America. A few are included in this release (see the Museu da Pessoa Life Stories from Brazil and the Mass Observation Archive from the United Kingdom). More international collections will come later!

Know of an online personal narrative collection that should be included? See our editorial policy on our About page and email us at Editor@AlexanderStreet.com!

Some of the exciting documents include:

A full text oral history interview with an anonymous British civilian female aid worker serving in Afghanistan. (Afghanistan Provincial Reconstruction Team, Interview #37, July 22, 2005).
A travel diary written by a man named Alvan Stewart. Included is mention of his new friendship with world-renown author James Fennimore Cooper while visiting Paris. (Alvan Stewart Papers, July 4, 1831).
Letters written by American Civil War veteran, Calvin Shedd, to his wife from the lonely, perilous battlefront and from remote cities, where he roamed looking for post-war work. (Calvin Shedd Papers, 1861-1869).
Audio excerpts voiced by Chicana feminists and activists from 20th century Los Angeles. (Women's History: Chicana Feminists).

There are also 788 new memoirs, oral histories and letters from the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. This brings us up to a total of 2299 documents from this repository.

While most of these resources are available for free, we also have links to proprietary companion collections. These materials are in-copyright letters, diaries, manuscripts and oral histories that are available only to patrons of subscribing libraries. The collections are: North American Women's Letters and Diaries; British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries; Black Thought and Culture; North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories; and The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries.

For patrons, if you see a database that you would like to have your library subscribe to, please refer your librarian to our request trials page, http://www.astreetpress.com/request.htm. For librarians who would like to subscribe, we have some special, low cost ways for you to do so. Contact Eileen Lawrence at lawrence@alexanderstreet.com to find out how.

We hope you enjoy browsing through In the First Person.

Anne Sittner