North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Guide to Photocopied Historical Materials in the United States and Canada by Richard W. Hale,Review by: H. G. JonesThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 39, No. 2 (April, 1962), pp. 247-248Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23517589 .

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Book Reviews 247

it was unintentional, obviously, but many times it was deliberate and in fact might have been dictated by the deceased or at least might have been acceptable to him. The book reminds us of something we

may forget—that humor need not be light or frivolous, but that it sometimes has an appropriateness and a naturalness in man's response to the major affairs of existence.

Duke University.

Arlin Turner.

Guide to Photocopied Historical Materials in the United States and Canada. Edited by Richard W. Hale, Jr. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press [for the American Historical Association], 1961. Pp. xxxiv, 241.

$5.00.)

With the increasing acceptance of photocopies as research tools and

as means of providing security copies of valuable manuscripts has come

the need for a guide to photocopied historical materials available in the United States and Canada.

The Council on Library Resources, Inc.,—an organization to which

every historian owes more than he realizes—in 1957 granted funds to

the American Historical Association for the purpose of compiling such

a guide. The Association's Committee on Documentary Reproduction undertook the task and appointed Dr. Richard W. Hale, Jr., as editor. After two and a half years of studying completed questionnaires, visit

ing hundreds of institutions, and tracing down the slightest hint of historical materials in photocopied form, Dr. Hale's guide has now been

published. It is an indispensible tool for every research institution.

Arranged by the geographical origin of the documents—foreign countries are included as well as all the Provinces of Canada and States

of the United States—the Guide to Photocopied Historical Materials in the United States and Canada contains a listing of historical materials

in photocopied form and indicates the source of the original, the holders

of the master negative and positive copies, and the type of photocopy. Photocopies of printed materials are excluded except in unusual cases.

A study of the section relating to North Carolina materials reveals

what a user must expect of such a formidable and complicated task:

a few errors. Example: the original special schedules of the Censuses

of 1850 through 1870 are credited to Duke University; they are in the State Department of Archives and History. But to itemize such errors

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248 The North Carolina Historical Review

would be to cast unwarranted suspicions upon a monumental work for

which all historians and research institutions should be thankful. Dick Hale has, since editing the Guide, assumed the challenging

post of Archivist of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

State Department of Archives and History.

H. G. Jones.

The Interurban Era. By William D. Middleton. (Milwaukee: Kalmbach

Publishing Co. 1961. Illustrations, appendix of lines built, glossary, and index. Pp. 432. $15.00.)

Though electric interurban railways spread over this country like a net in the first quarter of the twentieth century, this uniquely Ameri

can phenomenon continued to be neglected by conventional railroad

historians until the recent publication of a scholarly survey of electric interurbans in 1960 and the current publication of The Interurban

Era. The present work completes the definitive assay of the inter

urbans' history, technology, atmosphere, and place in American life. So completely have these lines vanished during the past forty years

that of literally hundreds of intercity electric passenger carriers only two survive as passenger and freight haulers, both in the Midwest.

Despite the obvious difficulties in reconstructing such an era in word and illustration, William D. Middleton ( one of a quintet of top Ameri can interurban students) has reconstructed it in a comprehensive set

of 560 photos, many very old and all historic. Nowhere is there avail able a collection of photos remotely equaling this. Nearly every com

pany is represented, often in quarto illustrations. The photographs are

supplemented with a fair amount of text, much of it in carefully re searched chapter-introductions and liberal photo captions, chapters on history and technology, a list of lines, and an excellent glossary.

North Carolina coverage includes an extremely rare illustration of the Wilmington-Wrightsville interurban and specially-assembled set of seven photos of the Piedmont & Northern, financially the most suc cessful of all interurbans.

This book is competently and responsibly done; it is interesting and handsomely executed. It merits a place in any library giving even minimum attention to railroad history or to Americana.

Belmont Abbey College.

Michael J. Dunn, III.

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