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illustration History of the Susan H. Douglas Collection

The central goal of the project is to preserve, digitize, and catalog all items in the Susan H. Douglas Collection of Political Americana. Acquired from an individual collector between 1957 and 1961, the Douglas collection includes approximately 5,500 items of American political campaign memorabilia and commemorative items dating to between 1789 and 1960.  Mrs. Douglas characterized them as: ballots, bric-a-brac (larger three-dimensional objects), broadsides, buttons, cartoons, maps and charts, pamphlets, paper miscellaneous, parade items, posters, prints, ribbons, sheet music, songbooks, textiles, trinkets, and wearing apparel.

In addition to the Douglas collection, Cornell University Library is conserving, digitizing, and cataloging approximately 1500 other similar items covering Presidential campaigns from 1960 to 1972.  These items are found in a dozen other collections in the Cornell Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, including the 1960-1966 public relations records of the Republican National Committee. We have also preserved, cataloged, and digitized 393 additional pieces of campaign literature dating from 1800 to 1964 found the Rare Books collection. We intend to digitize all Presidential campaign items in Cornell collections to the extent that current technologies allow.   

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Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections Cornell University Library

Copyright © 2002 Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections
2B Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853
Phone Number: (607) 255-3530. Fax Number: (607) 255-9524

For information regarding copyright issues and securing permission to publish digital reproductions of images from the Cornell University Collection of Political Americana, please consult our Copyright & Permissions Page.

For reference questions, send mail to: rareref@cornell.edu
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