Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project
The Project
The Feeding America project has created an online collection of some of the most important and influential American cookbooks from the late 18th to early 20th century. The digital archive includes page images of 76 cookbooks from the MSU Library's collection as well as searchable full-text transcriptions. This site also features a glossary of cookery terms and multidimensional images of antique cooking implements from the collections of the MSU Museum.
The Feeding America online collection hopes to highlight an important part of America's cultural heritage for teachers, students, researchers investigating American social history, professional chefs, and lifelong learners of all ages.
Feeding America was made possible with funds from a 2001 IMLS National Leadership Grant. The project began September 1, 2001 and was completed on August 31, 2003.
To learn more Information about the project please select one of the following:
- Introductory Essay - An essay by Jan Longone that discusses Feeding America and the history of cookbooks in America.
- Video Tour - A video highlighting
some of the key items in the Feeding America project.
(Requires Real Player http://www.real.com/player/) - Frequently Asked Questions - A list of common questions about the project, and their answers.
- Press Coverage - A selection of articles and reviews written about Feeding America and its recipes as well as links to sites on which Feeding America was a feature.
- Digitization Process - A detailed description of our process for digitizing the cookbooks.
- Editorial Intervention - A description of editorial interventions which were made during the creation of this digital collection.
- Encoding Guidelines - These are the XHTML guidelines for encoding the cookbooks. Includes the DTD
- Our Staff - The members of our staff who made Feeding America possible.
- MSU Cookery Collection - A brief overview of the collection which consists of over 10,000 cookbooks.
If you have questions or comments about the project, please see our comments page.
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