Preview PhillyResearch.net

In development: PhillyResearch.net, a collection of research resources for, by, about, and located within the greater Philadelphia area. Visit the site, explore the search tools, take the survey, suggest other resources.

New Features Debut on PhillyHistory.org!

PhillyHistory.org, a website that allows users to search through digitized historic photographs from the City Archives, recently released several new features to help people explore the history of Philadelphia.

 

The photographs on PhillyHistory.org provide a visual history of the city dating back to the 1860s, but it is now possible to view those scenes from the past right next to the present landscape. Photographs from PhillyHistory.org can be opened in GoogleEarth, a program that uses satellite and aerial images to enable people to virtually navigate through a 3-D landscape.

 

To view a photo in GoogleEarth, you must first have GoogleEarth downloaded and installed on your computer. Then on PhillyHistory.org, click on the blue link "Open in GoogleEarth." There are now three ways to see photos in GoogleEarth:

-         One photo at a time

-         The first 100 results of your search

-         The entire collection of 52,000 photographs

Once in GoogleEarth, you will notice that the images have been organized by decades in separate folders. With currently more than 52,000 photos in the system, we thought this would create a cleaner presentation.

 

New photographs are added to the website each week, which keeps our interns very busy! A new Behind-the-Scenes page on PhillyHistory.org provides readers with a virtual tour of the process of preserving and digitizing thousands of photographs.

 

To check out these new features, visit http://www.phillyhistory.org .  

 

 

 

Deborah Sting

 

Avencia Incorporated

Phone: 215-701-7506

Fax: 215-925-2663

www.avencia.com

 

True love at the Free Library

One of the librarians at the Free Library of Philadelphia writes:

In case you weren’t up at 5:57 am on Valentine’s Day, watching channel 6 news (in Philadelphia), here’s a link to a short feature they did on the current Antique Valentines exhibition at Central in the cases outside the Print & Picture Collection. Their original plan was to do a piece on the history of Valentines, but when they found out that we were having an exhibition, they modified their focus. Hang in to the end, the anchor’s comment about maybe you’ll find love in the library is priceless. The exhibition was curated by Christiane Wisehart, one of our volunteers, who has been working on the collection since the summer, cleaning and re-housing the valentines. Many thanks to her!

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news&id=5957043

Presidential Hair

The Academy of Natural Sciences will show the locks of five American Presidents over the President's Day Weekend, February 15, 16 and 17. These locks, from the Peter Browne Collection of Pile, Archives Collection 756, are part of a 12-volume set of "pile" (hair, wool, and bristles) that includes famous people, various races (Africans, American Indians, Hawaiians, Chinese, etc.), and animals of all kinds.

The five Presidents whose locks will be on view are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Franklin Pierce.

Eileen C. Mathias
Information Services Librarian, Archivist, &
Coordinator, Albert M Greenfield Digital
Imaging Center for Collections
Ewell Sale Stewart Library
The Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19103
215-299-1140
215-299-1144 FAX
mathias@ansp.org

Medieval Manuscripts on Exhibit at Bryn Mawr College

The spring exhibition in Bryn Mawr College's Canaday Library, Intimate Devotion: The Book of Hours in Medieval Religious Practice, features some of Bryn Mawr's most gorgeous medieval manuscripts and printed books and an extraordinary group of novice curators. The exhibition is the work of the students in Professor Martha Easton's undergraduate seminar last fall, "The Book of Hours and the Art of Devotion." It opened on Thursday, January 31, with a panel discussion featuring the student curators, and runs through May 30, 2008. Thirteen Bryn Mawr. Haverford, and Swarthmore students participated in the class.  Special Collections Librarian Marianne Hansen helped the class with expertise on the physical production of medieval manuscripts and also served as the exhibition coordinator.

On Tuesday, April 8, Kathryn Ann Smith, of the Department of Art History, New York University, will give a talk: "The Taymouth Hours: Stories and the Construction of the Royal Female Self in Late Medieval England."

The exhibition will be open from January 31 through May 30. The exhibition hours are 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. For additional information, contact the Special Collections Department at 610-526-6576.  Bryn Mawr's exhibitions and teh related programs are sponsored by the Friends of the Library.

Learn more at http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/exhibitions.shtml.

Intern wanted for consortial survey project

PACSCL is offering a paid internship for the spring 2008 semester to support its initiative to assess unprocessed and underprocessed manuscript collections in member libraries.

More details here.

National History Day Teacher Workshop, January 16

Helping Students Create Superior Projects

This workshop explores the elements of National History Day projects and the education strategies and skill building that teachers can use to help students learn and create their best work.

Bring your questions!!

January 16, 2008
4pm–5:30pm
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
1300 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107

RSVP: By January 11, 2008 to Kate Wilson: kwilson@hsp.org

National History Day is a program that teaches middle- and high-school students to engage with history. This year's theme is Conflict and Compromise in History. The Philadelphia regional competitions (NHD/Philly) will be held at the National Constitution Center March 12 (6th to 8th grades) and March 13 (9th to 12th grades). PACSCL and its member institutions support NHD/Philly by welcoming young researchers and by financial support for a team to advance to the state competitions. For additional information, see:

http://www.pacscl.org/nhdphilly/ http://www.nhdphilly.org/

(Volunteer judges are warmly welcomed, too. You need not be a trained historian -- a love of history and an appreciation of the enthusiasms of young learners are all that's required. See the nhdphilly.org website for more details.)

2 lectures and one exhibit at Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in January, 2008

 We invite you to attend the evening lecture

 

“Gardens of the Jazz Age”

 

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

6  -  8 pm

PHS auditorium, 5^th floor

 

Get ready for the 2008 Flower Show, Jazz It Up! Spend an evening enjoying the gardens of an exciting and extravagant era in our history, between the end of the First World War and the 1929 stock market crash, known as the Jazz Age. Garden historian and educator Jenny Rose Carey will focus on gardens from different parts of the country that epitomize the soul of the Jazz Age. Using images from glass slides from the McLean Library collection, Jenny will discuss how the influence of a changing culture, including the musical innovations of Jazz and the changing socio-economic situation in America, influenced gardens. How did gardens differ across the country? What other cultural influences were having an impact on garden design? Did more people have access to gardening? How can we learn about old gardens, especially those of everyday people?

British-born Jenny Rose Carey designed her first garden at age 16 and has since designed many gardens on both sides of the Atlantic. The daughter of a botanist, she has degrees in biology, education, and horticulture and has taught in both England and the United States, including at the Barnes Foundation and Temple University. Jenny is currently director of the Landscape Arboretum at Temple University Ambler.

 

Fee: $10.00. To register, please call Carol Dutill, 215-988-8869.

 

 

New Exhibit in the McLean Library

"Gardens of the Jazz Age"

January 23 - March 31, 2008

 

Incorporating material from the McLean Library archives, this exhibit is inspired by the 2008 Philadelphia Flower Show theme, Jazz It Up!  and is an accompaniment to garden historian Jenny Rose Carey's lecture "Gardens of the Jazz Age" (January 23). The exhibit features images from glass lantern slides and other material related to gardens and gardening in Philadelphia between the first and second World Wars.

 

 

Brown Bag Lunch Lecture: History of the Philadelphia Flower Show

Friday, January 25, Noon - 1 pm

PHS Auditorium

 

Janet Evans, McLean Library manager and library conservator Jude Robison will present a history of the Philadelphia Flower Show from its beginnings in 1829 to the present day. This illustrated lecture draws on material form the extensive archives of the McLean Library of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, including never-seen-before vintage Flower Show photographs and Show-related items.

 

While this lecture is free, we ask that you register by calling Carol Dutill, 215-988-8869 or  programreg@pennhort.org

 

 Please bring a lunch; we will provide beverages and snacks.

 

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society

100 North 20^th Street, Philadelphia, PA  19103

 

 

Janet Evans
Library Manager, McLean Library
The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
100 N. 20th Street
Philadelphia, PA  19103
Phone: 215-988-8779
Fax: 215-988-8783
email: jevans@pennhort.org
www.pennsylvaniahorticulturalsociety.org

 

Independence Seaport Museum Library Completes Processing Project

The J. Welles Henderson Archives and Library at Independence Seaport Museum is pleased to announce that the John E. Hand & Sons Company Records are ready for research. A finding aid will be available soon on our web site, www.phillyseaport.org/library.

The John E. Hand & Sons Company was a nautical instrument manufacturing firm that operated in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey from 1873 to 1997. The company engineered equipment for all varieties of floating vessels, including pleasure boats, large commercial ships, and those of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard. In addition to manufacturing a large selection of standard navigational tools used by mariners, such as compasses and binnacles, the company also developed new instruments, like an underwater wrist compass for the Navy.

The collection boasts a wide breadth of material, which includes financial records, patents, correspondence, contracts, catalogs and other ephemera, photographs, and engineering plans. A majority of the material is technical in nature, and would serve any researcher interested in the design and development of nautical instruments well.

The Seaport Museum acquired the Hand Collection through a private donation from Michael Rivkin in 2002. Processing was made possible by a grant from the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation, which will also fund processing the records of the Seamen’s Church Institute, scheduled for completion in June 2008.

Temple University shows the 1960's

Temple University's Paley Library is currently featuring two
exhibits on the 1960's; Underground Social/Political Papers
of the 1960's from the Contemporary Culture Collection and
Politics and Protest in Philadelphia from the Urban Archives.
The Underground Papers exhibition on the First Floor and
Mezzanine features local papers like The Drummer and the
Philadelphia Free Press, examples of papers from other
cities and related material such as Liberation News Service
packets.
The Protest in Philadelphia exhibition in the Urban Archives
Alcove on the Ground Floor includes images of the anti-
Vietnam War movement in the city, the 1970 Black Panther
Convention at Temple, as well as other important equal
rights movements and political organizations,from the Urban
Archives George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
Collection.
Both exhibits will be up through the end of December. The
library will be open from 8 AM until 5 PM on December 14,
December 17-21, December 26-28 and December 31. The library
will be closed on the remaining days in December.

Aerial Photos from Hagley and Google

Visit the Hagley Museum & Library's online exhibition of aerial photos of the Delaware Valley, and explore its linkages to current Google Maps photos of the same locations.

The historical photos were taken by the Victor Dallin Aerial Survey Company, 1924-1941. Subjects in the exhibition include events, industrial sites, towns and cities, and estates. Pictured here: aerial view of Camden NJ with Philadelphia in the background across the Delaware River.

Medieval Manuscripts on Display

Treasured Pages. Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts from the Free Library of Philadelphia

October 13 - January 6, 2008

Manuscripts from the collections of the Free Library of Philadelphia, on display at the Arthur Ross Gallery in the Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania. Details on the Arthur Ross gallery here.

Complementing the exhibition, University of Pennsylvania and the Free Library of Philadelphia are collaborating on a one-day symposium, "The Treasured Hunt," Friday, November 2. Details here.

Philadelphia Museum of Art Library Reopens

The Philadelphia Museum of Art Library reopens Tuesday, September 18, 2007 in its new home in the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building. Details on the library reopening here. Details on the Perelman Building here.

HIDDEN COLLECTIONS: The Hobo Ornithologist, the Searchable Database

Tales from the PACSCL surveying project: In this case, the papers of an ornithologist who consorted with hoboes in the course of his fieldwork, one of the unprocessed or underprocessed manuscript collections surveyed at the Academy of Natural Sciences as part of the project. Details here.

To find information on additional unprocessed or underprocessed collections, see the new searchable database, available here.

Undaunted: Five American Explorers

In UNDAUNTED: Five American Explorers, 1760–2007, an exhibition at the American Philosophical Society Museum from 22 June 2007 through 28 December 2008, the tools of exploration will be turned on exploration itself. Visitors will discover five explorers who were or are all members of the Society, and all with a Philadelphia connection: David Rittenhouse, John James Audubon, Titian Ramsay Peale, Elisha Kent Kane, and Ruth Patrick. The displays, including scientific instruments, paintings and drawings, maps, charts, photographs, and ship models, will consider these adventurers’ place in the history of American science and culture, explore their practices in the field, and reveal the various ways they documented and mapped their findings. [more]

Ben Franklin's book buying spree

State Senator Jeffrey Piccola pays a visit to the State Library to see the new Rare Book Room and rare books, including more than 240 volumes acquired for the Pennsylvania State Assembly in the eighteenth century. View the video (about 30 min) here.

Library Company Open Houses

Beginning September 5th, the Library Company will host a series of Open Houses, giving the public the opportunity to discover its unique collections, programs, and history. Held on the first Wednesday of each month from 5:00 to 7:00 pm, the Open Houses will allow visitors to wander leisurely through intimate galleries and enjoy refreshments amid the stately portraits and leather bindings of the Library’s Logan Room. The first Open House will be on September 5th. [more]

Haverford Welcomes Digital Collections Librarian

Haverford College Special Collections welcomes David Conners, our new
Digital Collections Librarian, who started August 1. David is a
graduate of Swarthmore College and received his library degree from
the Pratt Institute. David has worked at Columbia University Butler
Library, Pratt Manhattan Center Library, Oregon State Archives, and
Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, NY. His duties at Haverford
will include building and maintaining the Library's collection of
Digital Special Collections materials, including both
analog-to-digital and born-digital materials from Special Collections
(Quaker Collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts, College Archives, and
Fine Arts Collection).

New PACSCL members

PACSCL welcomes three new members this year:

Franklin & Marshall College
The German Society of Pennsylvania
Independence Seaport Museum

Be sure to visit them in person or on the web.

National History Day 2008

Sooner than you think, National History Day/Philly 2008 will be upon us. Here are the details for next year's Philadelphia-area competition:

NHD Philly Competition

March 12-13, 2008

National Constitution Center

Theme: Conflict and Compromise in History

What is NHD/Philly? It's a comprehensive program to engage young learners (grades 7-12) in thinking about history through research in primary sources and through individual and group presentations in a variety of media. A number of PACSCL member libraries open their doors to young researchers for the project and PACSCL itself sponsors a team of students to advance from the regional to the statewide competitions.

For additional information, see http://www.nhdphilly.org/

Bloggers in the Stacks

A team of PACSCL surveyors is boring like miners through the unprocessed or underprocessed manuscript collections of 22 member libraries. Tales from their efforts -- some inspiring, some exciting, some hilarious -- are blogged here.

Diane Turner to Blockson Collection

Announced yesterday. Dr. Diane Turner has been appointed curator of Temple University's Charles L. Blockson Afro American Collection.

Background on the Blockson collection and biographical data on Diane Turner here.

Building the City: Exhibition and online photo archive

The City of Philadelphia's online photo archive, http://www.phillyhistory.org/ , has been in the news a good bit lately, winning a "Best of Philly" award from Philadelphia Magazine, among other things.

An exhibit of 80 photographs from the archives opens today in the gallery of the Art Institute, 1622 Chestnut Street. The opening has received centerfold attention in today's Inquirer weekend section and is also featured on the home page of http://www.philly.com today. The photos were selected by the curator in partnership with the Records department and matted/framed by students at the Art Institute.

Online coverage at

http://www.philly.com/philly/gallery/20070803_Building_the_city.html

Make your costume / wear your costume -- October 21

It's October, and PACSCL member libraries turn to thoughts of....bats! Here's a potentially bat-filled Saturday (October 21)

Take the kids to the Rosenbach Museum & Library for a special costume-making workshop at 11:00 (reservations required).

Then travel up to the Wagner Free Institute of Science for "Bats, Myth, and Reality: A Spooky Creature Feature." Talk at 1:00, hands-on activities from 12-4. They suggest that you come in costume.

Revealed: Selections from the Fine Arts Collection of Haverford College

Revealed: Selections from the Fine Arts Collection of Haverford College
Magill Library, Haverford College
October 2, 2006 through January 31, 2007
Free & open to the public

Beauty, skill and imagination will be uncovered when more than 70 works of art­many presented in public for the first time­go on display in the exhibition Revealed: Selections from the Fine Arts Collection of Haverford College. Spanning many centuries and cultures, the show includes prints and paintings by artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Edouard Manet, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró and Haverford’s native son Maxfield Parrish, artifacts from ancient Greece and Africa, as well as a rich selection of photography including prints by André Kertész, Diane Arbus, Eikoh Hosoe and Andres Serrano.

More information:
Phone: 610-896-1161
http://www.haverford.edu/library/special/

PACSCL welcomes PACHS

We're delighted to welcome a new scholarly collaboration beginning with the letter P and embracing a number of our PACSCL members: The Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science. The founding members are:

• Academy of Natural Sciences
• American Philosophical Society
• Chemical Heritage Foundation
• College of Physicians of Philadelphia
• Franklin Institute
• Hagley Museum and Library
• The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
• Library Company of Philadelphia
• Princeton University
• University of Pennsylvania
• Wagner Free Institute of Science

PACHS is in the process of a search for its executive director. Position description here.

Lost & Found: Rediscovering Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance, Bryn Mawr College Library

This spring, Bryn Mawr College will be the site of a new interactive installation by Philadelphia artist Carol Moore: Lost & Found: Rediscovering Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance. The installation will introduce the work of seven important 16th-century female poets through handkerchiefs imprinted with the poets' sonnets and scattered throughout the campus. The handkerchiefs will also serve as an invitation to view contemporary printings of the poets' works on display in the lobby of Mariam Coffin Canaday Library. The installation will begin Sunday, March 26, and run through mid-April.

Moore is director of the MFA Programs in Ceramics, Painting and Sculpture at the University of the Arts, and has exhibited her work in China, Italy and Brazil, as well as the United States. She did a version of this installation at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice in the fall of 2005. As she explains the project:

"Renaissance Venetians re-introduced the use of the handkerchief as a signifier of social status that led to elaborate production, embellishment and then affectation throughout Europe. Each poet had in some way used a handkerchief, as a catcher of tears and sorrow, or as an object of attraction and seduction, perhaps left somewhere as forgotten evidence of their presence. The printed handkerchief became the object in this context that appeared lost until the moment it would be found by a passerby as a memento and an invitation to look further."

The handkerchiefs will be distributed throughout the campus by teams of students from Bryn Mawr's Italian Department and the University of the Arts, under the direction of Moore and Roberta Ricci, assistant professor of Italian. The distributions will take place on several occasions during the three weeks of the show, and people will be encouraged to pick them up and keep them.

The handkerchiefs will direct people to an exhibition of 16th- and 17th-century editions of the poets' works in the lobby of Canaday. The book exhibition was curated by Rima Girnius, graduate student in the history of art.

The installation and lecture are being sponsored by the Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Library and the Department of Italian.

For additional information, call the Special Collections Department: 610-526-5272.

Eat this Book!

"'A young child's attitude toward a book is not unlike that of a cannibal toward a missionary,' wrote A. S. W. Rosenbach, the noted book collector, who cited bibliophagy as one reason that so few first editions of early children's classics have survived."

For a rollicking review of the intersection of bibliophilia and gustation see the New York Times essay, "Books to Chew On," by Blake Eskin. [link -- registration required]

A View to Encourage Liberian Emigration:
Letters to Benjamin Coates
Magill Library, Sharpless Gallery & Foyer
February 2006

Among the remedies proposed in the nineteenth century to treat the scourge of slavery in America was the emigration of free blacks to Africa. Believing that African Americans could never receive justice in this country and might live more fulfilling lives away from racial discrimination, a number of abolitionists took up the controversial cause of the so-called colonization movement in order to give black Americans a fresh start.

Proponents of the movement came from many walks of life: young and old, black and white, male and female, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Quaker. Their efforts led to the resettling of thousands of African Americans and the establishment of the country of Liberia on the west coast of Africa. These individuals' dreams and fears, successes and disappointments are recorded in a rare collection of over a hundred letters written to one man, Benjamin Coates, a Quaker philanthropist and social reformer living in Philadelphia.

Letters from the Benjamin Coates African Colonization Collection form the core of the exhibition and are featured in the newly published book, Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates and the Colonization Movement in America, 1848-1880, edited by Haverford professor and Curator of the Quaker Collection, Emma Lapsansky-Werner with noted Quaker author Margaret Hope Bacon.

Printing for Manuscript: Rosenbach Lectures, Feb 2006

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LIBRARY Announces the
A. S. W. Rosenbach Lectures for 2006

Printing for Manuscript
Prof. Peter Stallybrass, University of Pennsylvania

Feb. 6: Blank Forms, or why we need to know how to write
Feb. 7: Marginal Space, or why margins precede writing
Feb. 13: Blank Pages, or why printing is a revolutionary incitement to writing by hand.
Feb. 15: Writing after Printing, or how printing invents manuscript

All lectures begin at 5:00 PM in the Class of ’55 Room, on the second floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, 3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia on the Penn campus. There will be a reception following the first and the final lectures. The lectures are free and open to the public.

For information, contact Michael Ryan: 215-898-7552, by email: ryan@pobox.upenn.edu.