Digital Projects

The DALNET libraries serve many different user groups. Their collections include instructional materials, rich cultural heritage resources and collections of unique one-of-a-kind objects.

Allen Park Veterans Administration Hospital Archives
John D. Dingell VA Medical Center
This database contains a sampling of items from the Allen Park VA Hospital archives including: photographs of events, newspaper articles, audio memoirs and a few video clips. The Allen Park VA hospital was deemed eligible for the National Register of Historic Places on Jan. 6, 1981 but was demolished in 2004.

Arab American Community Resources Directory
Arab American National Museum
Arab Americans are among the many ethnic groups that make up the population of the United States. The Community Resources Directory is a collection of annotated listings and provides Internet links and other information about national, regional, and local Arab American resources. This Directory is a collection of MARC records, and is searchable using the Arab American National Museum’s library catalog as a search engine for Arab American resources.

Automobile in American Life and Society
The Henry Ford – Benson Ford Research Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn
This web site contains overview essays and case studies on the automobile’s relationship to labor, gender, race, design, and the environment. Each essay is copiously illustrated with archival materials, and supplemented with a variety of resources for teachers and students (annotated bibliography, definitions, reading comprehension and discussion questions, writing and research assignments). Also included are more than a dozen oral histories of major automobile designers taken during the 1980s by The Henry Ford, digitized and made available online for the first time.

Black Abolitionist Archive
University of Detroit Mercy
The Black Abolitionist Archive is a collection of documents created by antebellum blacks. In contrast to the popular belief that the abolitionist crusade was driven by wealthy whites, these important documents provide a portrait of black involvement in the anti-slavery movement. The collection was donated to the University of Detroit Mercy by Dr. C. Peter Ripley in 1998. The paper collection is maintained by Dr. Roy E. Finkenbine who teaches in the UDM History Department. The digital archive is being developed and maintained by the UDM Libraries / IDS.

Building the Detroit Renaissance Center
Wayne State University
A locally created online image collection open to the public. Search or browse images and records.

Bulletins and Annual Reports of the Detroit Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Art
Detroit Institute of Arts
In 1919, the Detroit Museum of Art became the Detroit Institute of Arts and its collection was transferred to the City of Detroit. Thanks to a Detroit Area Library Network (DALNET) digitization grant, the Detroit Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Bulletins and Annual Reports have been digitized and are now available as .PDF files. Please note: not all volumes are available in their entirety.

Burton Historical Collection: Detroit and Michigan Automobile Factories
Detroit Public Library
This image collection has been created as part the of Making of Modern Michigan digitization project.

Changing Face of the Auto Industry
Detroit Public Library, Wayne State University
The Changing Face of the Auto Industry is a demonstration project showcasing digitized images of photographs, pamphlets, and other materials held by the Detroit Public Library.

CHIS (Community Health Information Services)
Wayne State University
CHIS provides learning opportunities, personalized health information packets, reference/research services, access to the library’s community designated computers and building use of the library’s Community Health Information Services Collection.

Detroit Publishing Company
The Henry Ford – Benson Ford Research Center
The canals of Venice. The Casbah. The Colorado Rockies. In the days before television, Americans longed to see exotic sights. The photographers of the Detroit Publishing Company, founded in 1895, brought the world to everyone’s living room.

Digital Dress: 200 Years of Urban Style, A Model Web Portal for Library/Museum Collaboration
Detroit Historical Museum, Meadowbrook Hall, The Henry Ford – Benson Ford Research Center, Wayne State University
A locally created online image collection open to the public. Search or browse images and records.

Dorothea June Grossbart Historic Costume Collection
Wayne State University
This demonstration project provides digital images and descriptions of the Dorothea June Grossbart Historic Costume Collection. The physical collection contains over 400 garments and accessories from the 19th and 20th centuries, and is curated by the Fashion Design and Merchandising Area of the Department of Art and Art History in the College of Fine Performing, and Communication Arts (CFPCA).

E. Azalia Hackley Collection
Detroit Public Library
This collection of sheet music from the Hackley consists of over 600 pieces of 19th and 20th century sheet music published between 1799 and 1922.

Exhibition Catalogues of the Detroit Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Art
Detroit Institute of Arts
These digitized exhibition catalogues are divided into two sections: the Detroit Museum of Art (1886-1919) and the Detroit Institute of Arts (1919-1923). The exhibition catalogues listed correspond with special exhibitions, including selections from the museum’s collection, collections lent by other institutions or individuals for temporary display at the DMA or the DIA, as well as a combination of both. Each exhibition catalogue has been digitized and made available as a .PDF file.

Great Lakes Shipping Collection Database
University of Detroit Mercy
Documents, publications, photographs, and negatives collected by a Jesuit professor over a seventy year period dealing with all aspects of Great Lakes Shipping from 1850 to the present day.

healthcalendar.org
A DALNET Project
Events listed in the calendar are contributed by organizations that provide health-related, group events to citizens in the seven county area of Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, St.Clair, Washtenaw, and Wayne County.

Herman Miller Consortium Collection
The Henry Ford – Benson Ford Research Center, Wayne State University
In 1988, Herman Miller, Inc. established the Herman Miller Consortium to share the historical product collection that had been accumulating as part of Herman Miller’s corporate archives in Zeeland, Michigan. The consortium collection, now held by thirteen museums all over the country, contained about 750 pieces of furniture, as well as a large quantity of product literature. As the lead institution in the consortium, The Henry Ford maintains the record of the consortium holdings. The Herman Miller consortium online database now provides access to these records.

NEW! Historical Exploration of Father Charles E. Coughlin’s Influence
University of Detroit Mercy
Among the first public figures to utilize the immense power of the nation’s passion for radio, Fr. Charles Edward Coughlin reached a broad ecumenical audience during the 1930s. Though a critic of the forces of mass consumer culture around him, he ironically used the first national network to distribute his political and economic views. Coughlin built his reputation on serving as a champion of the poor, foe to big business and financial interests, and as the mouthpiece for the hopes and fears of the nation’s lower middle-class. The taint of his anti-Semitism has tended to produce biographies that struggle to avoid simple demonization while also not apologizing on his behalf. Instead he acts as a cipher to various streams of marginal beliefs that exist in American society. This digital archive contains images, audio files, bibliographies, lesson plans, the Social Justice newspaper, the Shrine Herald, a biography of Father Coughlin, historical perspective, links to other websites, and letters from the President of the University of Detroit Mercy and Father Easton from the Shrine of the Little Flower.

Image Source (Formerly Just in Time Images)
The Henry Ford – Benson Ford Research Center
“The Benson Ford Research Center photographic collections contain over one million images in a variety of formats, including early forms such as daguerreotypes, tintypes, stereographs and cartes-de-visite. A selection of these collections are available for browsing on the web.”

Innovators
The Henry Ford – Benson Ford Research Center
Learn the stories behind some of America’s greatest innovators including Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Orville and Wilbur Wright.

John Novak Digital Interview Collection
Marygrove College Library
The John Novak Digital Interview Collection consists of interviews with African-American Detroiters, members of the Black Storytellers Association of Detroit and a participant in the Greensboro Sit-in demonstrations that occurred in February 1960. These digital interviews were conducted by students who interviewed relatives about their experiences during the “Jim Crow” days and their subsequent migration to the North. The developing collection supports the goal of learning about history and human progress from the experiences of ordinary individuals.

Julia’s Prayer: Recollections of Hamtramck, Michigan: A Polish-American Community
Oakland Community College
This collection is a unified set of videos with clips of photos, narration, music, and oral histories about early Hamtramck, Michigan, USA. The series contains 23 open-access web-accessible video files (version 1: RealOne Player and version 2: Windows Media Player accessible). Created as part of the Making of Modern Michigan digitization project.

Letters From Florence Nightingale
Wayne State University

Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Speeches and Interviews
A DALNET Project
This collection includes links to YouTube videos with speeches and interviews by and about Dr. King. The website also contains a timeline, a brief biography of Dr. King, and links to other related websites.

NEW! Maurice Greenia Jr. Collections
University of Detroit Mercy
Maurice Greenia, Jr. is a native Detroit artist whose work grows out of the city. This site is aimed at the preservation of his work, some of which cannot be physically preserved, and is viewable only in photographs. Browse through the site and see the range of creativity in medium and expression, ranging from poetry to drawing to sculpture, with many stops along the way, and often involving found objects.

National Automotive History Collection
Detroit Public Library
This image collection has been created as part the of Making of Modern Michigan digitization project.

NEW! Showroom of Automotive History
The Henry Ford – Benson Ford Research Center
Features significant automobiles of the American experience.

The 1946 Automotive Golden Jubilee
Detroit Public Library
Commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1946 Automotive Golden Jubilee, the Detroit Public Library presents an exhibit featuring a fascinating assortment of photographs and memorablia that reconstruct a surprising portrait of the Motor City at a crucial moment in its past.

The Henry Ford Historic Costume Collection
The Henry Ford – Benson Ford Research Center
A locally created online image collection open to the public. Search or browse images and records.

TIP Database
Detroit Public Library
TIP is a free community information and referral service which helps people find answers to the problems of everyday living. The TIP database includes information about a broad range of important community resources. [Accessible only at DPL]

Virtual Motor City Project: A Subset of the Detroit News Photo Archive
Wayne State University
The digitized images in this project represent a small subset of the Detroit News Collection, one of the premier photojournalistic resources freely available from a national-level newspaper and held at the Reuther Library.

Writing the River: A Portal to Detroit/Windsor Writers, Literature and Small Presses
Wayne State University
Writing the River (WTR) is a demonstration digitization project focusing on urban poetry from the 1960s and 1970s in Detroit and Windsor. This project was funded by a small grant from the Michigan Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, with the Wayne State University Library System acting as the Lead Grant Participant. Included in the digital collection are scanned images and text from small-press poetry books, chapbooks, broadsides, etc. The physical items are, in many cases, cherished pieces from authors’ or poets’ own collections, sometimes rare and in delicate condition.