This month marks an important milestone in the NEH-funded Library Company Papers Project: we have finished processing the Library Company’s institutional records from 1731 through 1881, and the finding aid for the collection is now online and available for researchers.

The finding aid is the best place to search for more information about subjects or specific items within the collection. You can browse the PDF of the finding aid at https://www.librarycompany.org/FindingAids/MSS00270-LCP-records-finding-aid_final.pdf.

Image: Minutes of the Committee for Fixing the Value of Lost Books, Volume 111, Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270).

The finding aid is also described, along with other Library Company finding aids, on our web site at https://librarycompany.org/using-the-library/findingaids/. Researchers searching in our online catalog, known as Koha, will find a collection-level record about the Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270) that includes a link to the finding aid.

Of course, thanks to the generous support of NEH, most unique items dating from 1731 to 1881 are also in the process of being digitized. These digital items are being uploaded to the Internet Archive, and some are also available in the Library Company’s Digital Library.

Please keep in mind that the digitized images do not necessarily include searchable transcriptions of all of the text in the documents. In other words, you shouldn’t rely only on keyword searching to find the materials you seek. Instead, you should use the collection’s finding aid first to identify a likely resource, then navigate to that digitized resource to view the material you’re seeking.

For an overview of how to do research at the Library Company, visit https://librarycompany.org/research/

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this blog post do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.