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Racing in the DPLA

Double Trouble at Santa Anita (Los Angeles Public Library)

Depending on how you search, there are anywhere from 3,000 to more than 5,000 items in the Digital Public Library of America related to horse racing, such as the photo above, which depicts:

a beautiful black horse, identified as Double Trouble, and a man that may possibly be a trainer or handler. The man holds the horse’s rein with his left hand, and is holding a large, fluffy cat next to his chest with his right hand.

Because the web can always use more cats, more horses, and more racing, I remixed a bot at the community app building platform Glitch that tweets racing items from the DPLA. Follow along @racingpix.

Posted in Racing on March 10, 2018 / Tagged Archives, Bots, Digital Public Library of America, Libraries, Photography, Santa Anita

In the Archives

Sometimes Eliza McGraw just has to go to the library:

I love to turn the flapping, oversized pages of actual turf papers. For me, reading about a horse like the 1920s-era racing giant Exterminator in the same way his fans would have makes the writing that much more vivid …

Tangentially related: Among the assets of the bankrupt Thoroughbred Times are the rights to the Thoroughbred Record, which began publishing in 1895 and continued, in some form, until 1991. Bundled with the TT archives, that would make a rich trove of turf journalism for some library to acquire.

Posted in Miscellany on September 19, 2012 / Tagged Archives, Keeneland Library, Libraries, Media, National Sporting Library