University of Maryland Libraries digitize historic Maryland House and Senate documents
The University of Maryland Libraries has recently digitized a full run of the Maryland House and Senate Documents series from 1840 through 1920. The Maryland House and Senate Documents series is a frequently overlooked, but essential research source for understanding many of the issues that concerned Marylanders in the 19th century. In essence, these were the reports of key state officials and government agencies submitted to the Governor and General Assembly at its biennial and special sessions. They range in subject matter from the prosaic (budget reports) to the critical (negotiations with southern states concerning secession).
Digitization was carried out by the Internet Archive; the University of Maryland Libraries are a member of Lyrasis’s Mass Digitization Collaborative, which offers competitive pricing on mass digitization projects.
Links to all the digitized volumes are on the University of Maryland Libraries’ website: http://www.lib.umd.edu/RARE/MarylandCollection/MDResourceGuide/MDhouseandsenate.html. Hyperlinks to the volumes also appear in our online catalog, and in OCLC.
Report of the State Librarian Llewellyn Boyle, 1860 (http://www.archive.org/details/reportofstatelib1860boyl). Note that library funding was an issue 150 years ago, and the Internet was not to blame! “The office is sadly deficient in all the standard books of Science, Art, Literature, History, and in fact, in all the more important publications since 1851. Few or no miscellaneous books have been added to the Library since that date, the chief cause being, the Library augmentation fund not being adequate for the purchase of such books.”
The Report of the Board of Police of the City of Baltimore, 1861 (http://www.archive.org/details/reportofboardofp1861boar). In this volume, Charles Howard, president of the Baltimore Board of Police, reports on the famous Baltimore Riots of April 1861, when Union troops from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania arrived in Baltimore and attempted to change trains. Pro-South civilians in Baltimore attempted to stop the troops from reaching Washington: “obstructions were placed on the track in the City, which stopped the progress of the remainder… Missiles were nothwithstanding thrown at the troops, and some of them were injured, their assailants were fired upon, and in some instances, with fatal effect.”