You may not have realized that May is National Bike Month, though I suppose it makes sense to get out and enjoy the spring weather on your bicycle. The first verifiable invention of the bicycle occurred in the 1800s, and as a glance through Nebraska Memories shows, Nebraskans have been enjoying their bikes for many years.

The Butler County Gallery Collection includes some portraits of children posed with their bicycles, such as Elvannah Brown. While she is technically riding a tricycle, rather than a bicycle, this image of toddler Nettie Butler was too adorable not to include.

The Townsend Studio Collection also includes some portraits of people with their bikes. This portrait of Mrs. Tomas Bennett most likely depicts a bicycle used for purely recreational purposes, while Ed Mockett’s portrait depicts a cyclist and his racing bike.

A less formal, and more recent, depiction of a bicycle is shown in this image of children at the Nebraska Children’s Home in Omaha receiving a bike, among other gifts, in 1938. Also of interest is a group of images of the Frazier Cycle Company in Omaha in the early 1900s.

Visit Nebraska Memories to search for or browse through many more historical images digitized from photographs, negatives, postcards, maps, lantern slides, books and other materials.

Nebraska Memories is a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. Nebraska Memories is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information, or contact Devra Dragos, Technology & Access Services Director.

Are your paper archives crumbling? Are your photographs fading? Now may be the time to plan for preservation, and digitization is one of the best ways to preserve your historical materials.

Digital versions of items provide access to content while limiting the handling of delicate materials. The lantern slide of the Van Fleet Teachers College (Nebraska Wesleyan University Collection) to the left has a crack down the right side which, while not readily obvious in the digital image, could become worse if the slide is handled regularly. The 1887 Letter from John Q. Goss and H.M. O’Neal to Major Butler (Sarpy County Historical Museum Collection) below has creases from folds that could eventually crack or tear.

Some items may disintegrate for other reasons such as chemical reactions within the structure of the material or a poor storage environment. The acetate negative of Lena Carveth and Ernest F. Carveth (Townsend Studio Collection) below is an example of deterioration due to a chemical reaction. Nitrate negatives are even more unstable; as the chemicals in the negatives decay, they become highly flammable and require very specific storage conditions. Before these items disappear forever, consider scanning them according to archival standards.

If you are wondering where to start with preservation, check out the Nebraska Library Commission’s Preservation of Library Materials list of resources. You will find guidelines and tips on the care and preservation of many different types of materials. And remember, if you do plan to digitize any materials, Nebraska Memories hosts Nebraska-related materials for web access and Library Commission staff may be contacted for consultation.

Nebraska Memories is a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. Nebraska Memories is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information, or contact Devra Dragos, Technology & Access Services Director.

The popular website Pinterest describes itself as a “visual discovery tool”. Nebraska Memories also allows for discovery based on visual resources.

Can you imagine what it would be like if Pinterest existed when some of these photographs were taken? I took a moment to let my imagination roam and come up with some Pinterest-esque caption for these great images. Once I got going, I discovered that Nebraska Memories hits several of the major categories you will find on Pinterest today: parties, food, fashion, kids, décor, and of course, cats!

Just like an image on Pinterest can lead you to a great recipe or DIY project, an image in Nebraska Memories can lead you to an interesting story about Nebraska’s past. Visit Nebraska Memories to search for or browse through many more historical images digitized from photographs, negatives, postcards, maps, lantern slides, books and other materials.

Nebraska Memories is a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. Nebraska Memories is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information, or contact Beth Goble, Historical Services Librarian, or Devra Dragos, Technology & Access Services Director.

The temperatures have been up and down this winter, to the extreme at either end, but only a couple of longstanding records have been broken. When many of the original temperature records were set, people didn’t have the wide-range of clothing material options that we do today. Wool was one of the most common materials used for coats. We assume the coat Miss Tony Smith, in the picture at the left, is wearing was made from wool (Butler County Gallery, 1908). With fashionable puff sleeves, the hem ends about a foot above her floor-length skirt, presumably to keep it out of the wet snow and mud. On some cold mornings I would appreciate those long skirts and multiple petticoats for added warmth. It appears that the scarf around her neck is a fur of some sort. For the middle-class, fur was another material used for warm apparel such as the muff held by Maude Zeilinger in the photo to the right (Butler County Gallery, 1909) .

Children wore garments similar to that of adults. The teenage girl seated in the picture to the left wears also wears a wool coat almost the length of long skirts and a fur scarf around her neck. Her brother wears a coat and hat that may have been fashioned after a sailor’s outfit–the wool coat is double-breasted with two rows of large buttons, and his hat is a flat cap (C.E. McNeal family, Butler County Gallery, 1906). While the two ladies and the teenage girl all wear fancy hats, Christie Otoupalik, pictured at the left, would appear to have an advantage against the cold wind with her hooded wool coat (Butler County Gallery, 1902).

Men also wore warm weather apparal made of various materials. Friends Matt Cram and John Ayers wear long cloth overcoats in their studio portrait on the left (Butler County Gallery, 1907), while Jay Rising of Rising City, in the photograph on the right, wears a coat made from some type of fur or perhaps buffalo hide (Rising City Library Collection, 1902). A couple of decades later the rage would include racoon fur coats for the fashionably dressed young folks about town. While today there is a definite taboo against wearing real animal skins and fur, they have been used since the age of cavemen for clothing and other household goods.

The trend for fur coats continued on for several decades. Although no longer of racoon, several of the ladies who were part of the Fine Arts Association Committee in Lincoln, wear full coats made of various types of fur (Townsend Studio Collection, 1938.)

Visit Nebraska Memories to search for or browse through many more historical images digitized from photographs, negatives, postcards, maps, lantern slides, books and other materials.

Nebraska Memories is a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. Nebraska Memories is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information, or contact Beth Goble, Historical Services Librarian, or Devra Dragos, Technology & Access Services Director.

We are having balmy January days here in Nebraska, but people in colder parts of the country may be glad to know that January is National Hot Tea Month. While there are only a few days left in the month, a hot cup of tea is always a good way to ward off the winter chill. A look through Nebraska Memories reveals that tea has been a part of people’s lives for many years.

Tea cups are featured on this Fremont family’s table as they gather in their kitchen for a meal. Photographs from the William Wallace residence in Omaha show a tea kettle in the kitchen and silver tea sets in the dining room and parlor.

Although there may not have been actual tea involved, in my opinion, some of the sweetest tea-related pictures in Nebraska Memories are the images of children having tea parties. There are several posed portraits of children with tea sets in the Butler County Gallery collection, including this photograph of Dorothy Rich sitting with a doll and a stuffed bunny. The Nebraska State Historical Society collection includes a less formal image of children playing with a tea set in a barn.

Visit Nebraska Memories to search for or browse through many more historical images digitized from photographs, negatives, postcards, maps, lantern slides, books and other materials.

Nebraska Memories is a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. Nebraska Memories is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information, or contact Beth Goble, Historical Services Librarian, or Devra Dragos, Technology & Access Services Director.

Be it ever so humble … The interiors of early Nebraskans’ homes varied as much as the exteriors. Sod houses may have had only one room, and tenement houses may have had shared public areas, but there were mansions, too, containing extras like formal entry halls, libraries, smoking rooms, conservatories, sun rooms, and billiards rooms.

The image at left shows a sparsely finished room in an early 1900s Omaha settlement house which still provided a corner for relaxing in a rocking chair to read a book from the shelf while listening to music on the gramophone (Gramophone and chair inside settlement house, Omaha Public Library Collection). About four decades later, the descendants of those immigrants would have had a living room more similar to the one at the right (John Birkel family, Butler County Gallery Collection). While basics furnishings are the same and the room is used for reading, relaxing and listening to music, the easy chairs are now upholstered and the floor carpeted while the music comes from the radio at the left. Note that in the settlement house a clock and picture sit on top of the book shelf, while in the later living room a clock sits on the fireplace mantel with a picture hanging above.

In a simple house or farm house, meals were most likely served in the kitchen as is the case in the photograph to the left (Kitchen dining, Keene Memorial Library Collection). In the better part of town, a fancy house would have had a separate dining room such as the one at right, featuring chandelier lighting, coffered ceiling, carved dining table with matching upholstered chairs, oriental carpet and glass-front cabinet showcasing the fine china (Ray Julius Nye residence dining room, Keene Memorial Library Collection). Still the family in the kitchen looks happy enough.

While the woman in the picture above probably cooked her family’s meals on a wood stove and used kerosene in her lamps, the young woman in the picture at right appears to have all the latest appliances available in 1945 (Man and woman in a kitchen, Omaha Public Library Collection). In addition to the gas stove and oven, she has electricity (the fuse box is behind her), indoor plumbing and probably a water heater. All that and a soldier safely returned from the war!

How comfortable do you think the bed at the left would be? It seems to dip a bit in the middle. But then this photograph is of a “third floor bedroom,” so even though the room is nicely furnished with extra pillows on the bed, framed photographs hung from a picture rail and a bedside table, perhaps it was not the “best guest room” (Bed at Wallace residence, Omaha Public Library Collection). In the master bedroom at the right, however, one would think the Mr. and Mrs. slept quite well in their own beds with the carved and turned frames (Ray Julius Nye residence master bedroom, Keene Memorial Public Library Collection).

No matter the furnishings or the number or types of rooms, people could still kick back and relax in their own personal space like the gentleman above (Man in rocking chair at desk, Nebraska State Historical Society Collection). Or perhaps enjoy a Christmas party like the children in the picture below with the interesting tree and decorations (Joseph T. May residence Christmas party, Keene Memorial Public Library Collection). We hope your Christmas is as merry as theirs!

Nebraska Memories is a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. Nebraska Memories is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information, or contact Beth Goble, Historical Services Librarian, or Devra Dragos, Technology & Access Services Director.