About: Jim Walsh / Readex Account Executive
- Before entering academic library sales in 1998, Jim worked for 20 years as an academic librarian, including as head of reference at Tufts University. Jim is author or co-author of books on maps and government documents. Since 2006, Jim has been president of Friends of the Fitchburg Public Library.
Posts by Jim Walsh / Readex Account Executive:
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Ships Ahoy! They don’t make ships like this anymore,
04 Nov 2010
Contrary to this newspaper report that the event would take place in November 1797, the frigate USS Constitution was actually christened and launched at Boston’s naval shipyards the previous month on October 21—213 years ago this fall. During the course of the next two weeks in 1797, a number of newspapers wrote or republished articles [...]
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Right to vote for U.S. women approved August 1920,
18 Aug 2010
In her recent NewYork Times column titled “My Favorite August,” Gail Collins wrote about women getting the right to vote in August 1920. The previous year—on May 19, 1919—both Houses of the 66th Congress had approved House Joint Resolution 1, proposing the 19th amendment to the 48 states. The Joint Resolution was only two sentences [...]
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Boston Honors its First African American Police Officer,
26 Jul 2010
Last month the City of Boston and Boston Police Department (BPD) corrected history and recognized the service of Horatio Julius Homer — Boston’s first African American police officer. Margaret Sullivan, the BPD archivist, and Bob Anthony, a Boston police officer, pored through records to reveal that Horatio Homer was appointed to the BPD in 1878 — not [...]
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The Dunlop Broadside a k a The Declaration of Independence,
02 Jul 2010
According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, there are 26 known copies of the “Declaration of Independence,” which is often referred to as the “Dunlop Broadside.” The name is attributed to the Philadelphia printer, John Dunlop, who was responsible for the first printing. After Dunlop printed and distributed his broadside during the [...]
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Shipwreck Found in Lake Michigan: The Sinking of the L.R. Doty as Covered in 19th-Century Newspapers,
30 Jun 2010
On June 24, the Associated Press (AP) distributed an article about the recent discovery of the L.R. Doty, a steamship that sank in Lake Michigan in 1898. The article begins: A great wooden steamship that sank more than a century ago in a violent Lake Michigan storm has been found off the Milwaukee-area shoreline, and [...]
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The First Map of the Gulf Stream: Benjamin Franklin’s Maritime Observations,
16 Jun 2010
Many of us have read about Benjamin Franklin’s scientific work with electricity, but few know that this Renaissance man is also responsible for a groundbreaking study of the Gulf Stream current. On June 9, 2010, the following was posted by Ed Redmond (Geography and Map Reference Specialist at the Library of Congress) on MAPS-L listserv: [...]
