Colgate University Libraries is using the ContentDM platform as a pilot project to investigate different options in publishing digital library resources from our collections. As a pilot project, the look and feel as well as functionality of the site will vary from visit to visit as changes are made.

The Andrew J. Russell Photographs

Our first test collection is of approximately 50 photographs taken by Andrew J. Russell during the American Civil War.

Unlike other noted photographers of the American Civil War, Andrew J. Russell was actually enlisted in the Union Army, in the Quartermaster's Corps to be precise.  Colgate's album of his photographs reflects this affiliation--fortifications near Washington, railroad projects, the supply machinery necessary to support the war in the field. Although Russell is primarily known for his photographs of the Union Pacific Railroad construction, historians have begun to give his Civil War photographs the credit they are due.

A Burmese Album

An album of 98 sepia albumen photographs of various sizes, mounted on both sides of the page, taken by the expatriate German photographer Peter Klier.  Most of the photographs probably date from the early to late 1890's.  The provenance of Colgate's album is unknown, but it was almost certainly the gift of one of numerous Madison University graduates working as missionaries in Burma.  Klier was known to market such albums to visitors.  The album has considerable religious, ethnographic, and artistic value, especially since many of the physical subjects must have decayed or been destroyed during the intervening years.