Conrad Weiser, Indian Affairs Agent (1696-1760)

Johann Conrad Weiser lived in Pennsylvania in the early 1700s and is mostly known for his role in shaping the history of colonial America through his work as an “Indian affairs agent.” He lived quite a busy and remarkable life, although perhaps everyone who crossed an ocean to live on a continent entirely unknown for [...]

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Rights and Reproductions, or “R&R” for those in the know

Since starting at HSP in July as the new Rights and Reproductions Associate, I’ve handled lots of orders for digital reproductions of HSP materials and permission to distribute these materials in books, exhibitions, and other media.  Processing R&R orders provides a great front row seat to HSP’s unique and diverse materials, not to mention the cool [...]

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Dad humor of the early 1900′s

Phase two of HSP’s Digital Center for Americana Project is well underway. This project has the same broad goals of processing and creating digital access to collections as the pilot phase did, but this time around the focus is on ethnic history collections rather than the Civil War. The collections in DCA2 all come from [...]

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These American Lives

With part two of the Digital Center for Americana project underway, collections coming up the digital library pipeline include family album watercolors and oral history sound recordings that provide unique glimpses into Philadelphia family life, as well as how family life changes when individuals leave their country of origin for Philadelphia. Given the role that [...]

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Telecommuting History

Archives, like nearly all fields, are being forced to do more with less.  Coupled with the denizens of the internet growing desire for more content at a more rapid pace and we have quite the dilemma.  Luckily, there are still a few tricks about that can help to lessen both of these trials plaguing cultural [...]

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The Life of a Digital Collections Intern

Posted on behalf of Stephanie Sendaula Before I even applied for my current internship, which is in digital collections, I debated whether or not I should apply for a traditional archive internship … processing, describing, ladder-climbing, etc… To be honest I do a little bit of those now. Actually, I do a lot of ladder [...]

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Improving Access Through Technology

I am happy to announce that the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s new digital assets management system (DAMS) has officially gone live for the public!   You can access the DAMS by going to digitallibrary.hsp.org The implementation of this system, which is driven by the open source software Collective Access, was a major component of the [...]

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The Path to the Civil War

Though I’m now working with more recent materials, I couldn’t resist one last Civil War-related post as we approach the 150th anniversary of the war. Much attention will be placed on the anniversary of the start of the war: April 12, 1861, the date that Confederates opened fire on the federal Fort Sumter in South [...]

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Women’s Views on the Civil War

Our processing work for the Digital Center for Americana pilot project is winding down. Over the last year, we’ve processed, conserved, described, and selectively digitized 51 collections at HSP that have ties to the Civil War. We worked on the papers of President James Buchanan, Treasury Secretary and Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, [...]

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Obsolecence in Vogue

In my last blog post I wrote about HSP’s ongoing wrestling match with its card catalog and the difficulties in converting legacy systems and data.  One thing I failed to mention is the importance of designing any information system with future data migration in mind.  This is of particular importance for an archival institution, like [...]

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