New Web Site Presents A Day-By-Day Description Of The Lewis And Clark Expedition

Through the click of a keyboard, an animated introduction takes Web surfers on a nearly 8,000-mile journey that was traveled by horse, boat and foot. President Thomas Jefferson’s directive to the Corps of Discovery to find a water passage across the continent launched an expedition into the unknown, resulting in exciting discoveries of cultures, animals and plants, as well as some terrifying encounters. Journal entries, maps, timelines and links to other resources are all featured on a new Web site constructed by the University of Cincinnati Digital Press (UCDP) and featuring the resources of University Libraries.

Alice Cornell, head of the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Books Department and editor for the UCDP, says the Web site, “Lewis & Clark: A Journey,” is part of the mission of the libraries’ to make its rare and diverse resources more widely available through today’s modern technology.

The site features the first official report and most famous account of the expedition, published in 1814. The first edition of Meriwether Lewis’ journal, edited by Nicholas Biddle, is housed in the University Libraries Archives and Rare Books Department and features the first detailed map of the American West that Cornell says remains quite accurate to this day. Maps in various resolutions are also included on the Web site. A featured Web link titled “Today in the Lewis and Clark Expedition” takes Web explorers back to where explorers Lewis and Clark were on that date exactly 200 years ago.

The University Libraries holdings are featured in an online reading list prepared by Sally Moffitt, Libraries history bibliographer.

Cornell says the resources on the Web site will continue to grow as the bicentennial of the journey stretches into the expedition’s arrival in St. Louis in October, 1805. That includes a variety of screen savers that can be downloaded from the site.

Future Web site exhibits will include “The Botany of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” which will highlight images and journal entries of some of the 200 plants that were observed and collected during the voyage. The exhibit will be illustrated with images from the University of Cincinnati’s herbarium, located in Crosley Tower.

The link to Lewis and Clark: A Journey is at www.ucdp.uc.edu/lewisandclark/journey.asp