Long Island History & New York State History

Key:  Blue = Main Web Pages; Olive = Research Aids; Turquoise = Commemorative sites (Local to U.S. & International) Note:  Click above to go directly to the site, look below to read a short description of the site (there are also links below)

¯¯¯

ªLong Island Historyª

This site covers selected aspects of the region's library, literary, political, social, business & economic, military, technologic, geologic, religious, shipbuilding, shipwreck, village, town, and county history, among other things.  These range, e.g., from the Big Duck to Nobel Laureates, to L.I. prehistory & local Indian life, to Revolutionary War Raids & Spies, to resident & transcient (but productive) literary figures, such as James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, William Cullen Bryant, even Antoine de St. Exupéry (who wrote the Little Prince, while in exile, at Nortport, L.I., N.Y. ).  This site is merely suggestive of the broader scope & depth of its subject, and is intended to encourage browsing, curiosity, study, serious in-depth historical research & publication, and is necessarily more impressionistic than comprehensive.  Yet, it contains over 130 clickable, alphabetically-arranged subject headings (and subheadings), & may surprise you, in its inclusion of only 2 to 3 links to Newsday's lihistory.com. 

ªNew York State Historyª

97 clickable, alphabetic subject headings & sub-headings guide you on a romp through some of the State's artistic, architectural, canals', cities', frontier, industrial, medical, military, political, social history and personalities, e.g., U.S. Presidents, selected First Ladies and Vice Presidents (who hailed from NYS), NYS Governors, abolitionists, suffragists, and more.  While no claim is made as to its comprehensiveness, at the time it was created (11/05), it was the most inclusive N.Y.S. history website located.

ªCelia M. Hastings Local History Roomª

From its clickable Table of Contents, this site not only tells you how to find the room within the library (along with its hours), provides a clickable, classified list of its general varies of holdings, and information on its Patchogue-Medford Area, Long Island, & New York State history collections & services, in various forms & formats.  Here you will also find several varieties of useful Links, including a partial list of recent staff-produced Local History publications.  You'll also find clickable links to geographically-organized,  additional useful contacts, in related organizations & agencies, and to classified lists of websites & research tools (both those original and home-grown by local librarians, at the Patchogue-Medford Library, which hold up well against those produced further afield, both types of resources being valuable to the study of local history.  This site also includes brief histories of the Library, of its Local History Room, and the latter's Mission Statement, and more, as well as some public library-oriented offerings designed as suggestions and aids to improving public service and access to local history materials.

ªThe Patchogue-Medford Area's Journey, Mark H. Rothenberg © 2006 ª 

This is a preliminary outline for a web page on the history of this small, but hardly insignificant geographic area of Long Island, N.Y.   It begins with an introductory information section, designed to include a geographic orientation, & brief community profiles of the incorporated and unincorporated villages of the area, followed by a slowly expanding list of the variety of reference & research works that either exist, or need to be created or improved (preferably electronically , and searchable).   These are arranged by category (Guides, Bibliographies, Dictionaries & Encyclopedias, Genealogical Sources, Geographic Sources, Handbooks & Manuals, Indexes, Periodicals, Yearbooks, etc.).    The third section represents the chronological approach to the area's history (or slices of P-M Time (e.g., P-M in geologic time, P-M prehistory, the Colonial Period, etc., down to its recent history).    Equally important is the subject approach, or themes across P-M time (e.g., P-M agricultural history,  archeological sites, architectural history, association history, biography, business, economic & industrial history, education history, environmental & ecological history, history of public and private institutions, Fire Island National Seashore history, literary history, maritime history, medical history, etc.   The outline is loosely adapted, from Longwood's Journey (with thanks for permission to do so).  That  site was  created by middle school students, under expert guidance from teachers, in cooperation with Longwood Public Library.  But, don't be quick to dismiss it.  For the site is valued  by historians, genealogists, journalists, libraries, archives, authors, teachers, students, academe, and others who discover it,  for it is particularly rich in  transcribed primary material.  This is a model that can be adapted other communities, and to many other types of institutions, notably historical societies.    Using a similar approach, and by encouraging growth of well-researched locally-focused reference works, and historical documentation online, our understanding of the life and liveliness  of the local past can be greatly enhanced, and more easily conveyed:   its connections, relations, participation in, and reflection of the wider world, in larger events, in social, political, educational, & business  movements, in literature, science & technology,   in larger than life and unassuming personalities, and considerably more.  What emerges should help rewrite the books to recognize the greater impact of the local community on the world & the particular effects of the world on the local community.  In this case, the P-M area community.   It would give wider dissemination to the significance of the history of communities all too easily dismissed, and perhaps encourage growth of and greater respect for local historical preservation, museums, and tourism. 

¯¯¯

ªGuide to Localizing Dewey for Long Island Useª

Intended mainly as an adaptable model for public libraries, this may also serve in those rare private collections that use Dewey.  It is currently in use Patchogue-Medford Library's Celia M. Hastings Local History Room because Dewey is no more specific than the county level.  So, histories and records about, or produced by, individual counties, towns, villages, customary village groupings (e.g., Three Villages, Five Towns), and surrounding islands were necessarily intermixed and scrambled.  This is no longer the case.  In addition, as Dewey recognizes no distinction between bi-county (L.I.-specific Nassau-Suffolk) and 4-county (island-wide Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, & Kings counties) regional studies, these are now distinguished. Only 4 Dewey Decimal Numbers are affected.  Codes used are mnemonic (they sound like what they are, so, e.g. material or by the Town of Brookhaven will be grouped under T-BROO, on the village of Sayville, under V-SYVL, on Gardiners Island, under I-GRDNR. Since we have been using it, it has greatly improved access to materials and speed of service, and contributed to our collection's recognition as one of the most organized on L.I. and in the state, by a N.Y.S. Museum official, working on the Encyclopedia of New York State.   

ªLong Island Forum Index, (Vol. 1, No. 1,  1938-2003)ª

This has proven one of The Patchogue-Medford Library's most popular sites, which would not have been possible without the consent and support of the Long Island Forum's publisher and editors.  It is the cumulative index  to what was one of Long Island's most popular and enduring local history magazines, which unfortunately ceased in 2004.  Hundreds of articles of varying length on quite varied aspects of L.I. history, along with genealogy, folk traditions, legends, diary and account book entries, ships logs, other genealogical material, historical correspondence, book reviews, historical portraits and illustrations, occasional notes and short bibliographies, and more, appeared over the years, in its pages.  The original print version included several separate decennial indexes, followed thereafter, by a series of annual indexes.  Here, they are all brought together in a single electronic version, searchable in a variety of ways.  You can browse subject headings, by clicking from a letter of the alphabet.  Alternatively, you may perform a search by word (or phrase), or a search by publication year.  Both of these types of searches can be refined, e.g., limiting results to only articles containing correspondence or only those containing images.  Both can be sorted either chronologically, or by subject, and by publication year (or year span).  Searches (or clicking on a subject heading, will provide a list of entries, in the format:  publication year: page(s) on which the article appears.  Some of the listings provided will be directly on the topic, others may be a passing reference, appearing somewhere on the page.  Patchogue-Medford Library, and many other L.I. libraries that take a serious interest in local history, have the complete printed set of the Long Island Forum.  

ªLong Island & Patchogue Vertical File Subject Heading Listª

This is a searchable guide (using Control + F[ind]) to several thousand subject headings, alphabetically-arranged (A to Z), in (physical) file folders, which are housed in Patchogue-Medford Library's Celia M. Hastings Local History Room, in the 6 file cabinets (i.e., 24 drawers) of the Long Island Vertical File and 2 file cabinets (i.e., 8 drawers) of the Patchogue Vertical File.  Notes:  L.I.-Medford is currently housed in the L.I. Vertical File.  A folder may contain as few items as one, or many items (usually newspaper articles, sometimes pamphlets, maps, illustrations, or other material that fits easily into a folder). There were several reasons, based on people's actual use of the Files and of the Room, that the list was heavily subdivided (in print, its is now over 100 p.). Those reasons boil down to promoting faster, more precise access to more specific kinds of information, increasing users' research and study time, while reducing time that would otherwise have been lost in thumbing through thick folders of undifferentiated material, on very broad subject areas.  Another reason for making this kind of information more readily accessible, is that it's so unexpected in a local history setting, and better promotes the use and study of the material, research and publication.  People occasionally ask why vertical file content is not online. Copyright restrictions, over a broad array of material, involving numerous publishers and many individuals, is a good part of the answer. So is the cost.  Meanwhile, the Subject Heading Lists provide the public a means to explore a major part of our holdings, by topic, for the first time, even when the Local History Room is closed, & from the comfort of your home.

ªResearching Your Houseª

This is the digital online version of a 4-page brochure produced by the library to help local researchers, and while Suffolk County, N.Y.-oriented, may be mirrored, to various degrees, in other NYS counties, and by those in other states.

¯¯¯

ªBenjamin Franklin Tercentenary Website,  2006 ª

2006 marks a year-long national and international celebration of the 300th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth.  Eleven clickable subject headings guide you to websites on some of the better and less well-known aspects of the sage's life:  (a) Tercentenary, General Assessments, & Biography, (b) Frankliniana (a modest bibliography drawn from the Patchogue-Medford Library collection), (c) Colonial Nation-Builder, (d)  French & Indian (Seven Years') War Participant, (e) American Revolutionary & Founding Father, (f) U.S. Constitutional Convention & Bill of Rights, (g) Creator of Institutions & Educational Reformer, (h) Musician, (i) Papers, Writings, Quotations, (j) Scientist & Inventor, (k) Son, William:  The Disowned Disciple, (l) State of Franklin (or Frankland, in East Tennessee).  Both Benjamin Franklin, as Postmaster General of the Northern Colonies, setting up milestones across the Island, and his son, William, after whom a Revolutionary War British Fort Franklin, on the Island's north shore, was named, had a L.I. connections.

ªA Glimpse into Long Island's Poetic Heritage, 2006, rev. & exp., 2007 ª

Originally a "Long Island Aspects" handout, for National Poetry Month (April 2006), the websites listed here were selected to provide a general impression (rather than to be comprehensive), providing a morsel of the rich poetic heritage that Long Islanders have contributed to their Island, state, country, and the wider world, beginning with figures like Jupiter Hammon, Walt Whitman,  John Howard Payne, William Cullen Bryant, and Elizabeth Oakes Smith, among a great many others.  It is also intended to indicate this is a living, active tradition, of great variety and verve, as the Poetry Bay / Long Island Quarterly, and Long Island Poetry Calendar websites strongly hint. 

ªLong Island in African American History, 2007ª

 A short bibliography of clickable links and of selected Patchogue-Medford Library holdings

ªLong Island in African American History, 2006ª

A clickable Table of Contents takes you quickly to not only to directions to the Room, its hours & services, but to guides, archival finding aids, general descriptions of the range of its collections  -- archives, audiovisual collections, books, E-Resources, genealogical materials, serials, vertical files -- to its home-grown websites, publications, and to research leads (related outside websites, contacts, resources, & organizations -- local, town, county, state, and more), to its Mission Statement, brief histories of the Library & Local History Room, and links to its searchable 100 p. LI Vertical File Subject Headings List, Long Island History & New York State History websites, and even a way to customize Dewey Decimal Classification for Long Island use.

ªWomen's History Month  (LI & NYS Apects) 2007ª

Prepared for Women's History Month (March 2007), this site includes a short, intriguing mix of web links and items acquired by The Patchogue-Medford Library.   

ªLong Island in Women's History,  2006ª

Originally prepared for Women's History Month (March 2006), this short, introductory page is a combination of selected links and bibliographic entries that can only begin to suggest the historic role of notable (and not so well-known) women in the development of Long Island, and often the state, nation, and sometimes, the world.