COLLECTION HIGHLIGHTS

BOOKS

The Sojourner Truth Room contains over 16,000 books on all aspects of African American history and culture, including literature, art, music, sociology, religion and biography. Highlights include:

• 42 volume collection of slave narratives, collected by the Federal Writers' Project of the WPA
• 30 volume Schomburg Library of Nineteenth Century Black Women Writers
• reprinted volumes of the papers of Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington
• first editions and other rare books by African American authors, including slave narratives and works by Harlem Renaissance writers

DATABASES

The Sojourner Truth Room owns several databases on CD-ROM which are available for use only in the Truth Room:

• African Americans in Cinema
• The Freedman's Bank Records
• The Harvard Guide to African American History
• Heritage Book Archives: An Index to the Signature of Deposit for the Freedman's Savings and Loan Bank, 1865-1869 for the State of Mississippi
• Indiana African Heritage
• People of Color: Black Genealogical Records and Abstracts from Missouri Sources

In addition, the Library System subscribes to a collection of licensed databases which provide information about African American history and culture.

PERIODICALS

The Sojourner Truth Room subscribes to a wide range of popular and scholarly magazines and journals, and maintains complete backfiles of many periodicals, including Ebony, Jet, Crisis, and the Journal of Negro History.

VERTICAL FILES

Arranged by subject, the files contain articles from newspapers and magazines, pamphlets, calendars and other ephemera.

A separate photograph file features prominent individuals from the 1970's to the present.

BIOGRAPHY AND LITERATURE INDEX

An extensive card index provides name access to the biographical information found in the book and vertical file collection. A separate index provides access to the short stories and plays in the collection.