Digital Humanities

The Library Company launched it’s first online exhibition, Ardent Spirits in 1999. In 2019 we are celebrating 20 years of digital humanities work at the Library Company of Philadelphia!

Recent projects include:

Digital Paxton

https://librarycompany.org/redrawing-history/
www.digitalpaxton.org

As an archive, Digital Paxton collects more than 170 political cartoons, manuscripts, broadsides, pamphlets, and German-language translations of pamphlets related to the Paxton incident. The original papers reside at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, the Moravian Archives, and Haverford College Quaker and Special Collections. Currently, Digital Paxton features more than 1,600 free, open-source, print-quality (300 dpi) images. In the future, I hope to expand the archive to include materials residing at Lancaster History and the Historical Society of Dauphin County.

The Morris Collection
http://www.morriscollection.librarycompany.org/

Comprised of over 2500 glass negatives, photographic prints, film negatives, and lantern slides, the Marriott C. Morris Photograph Collection represents a significant portion of Philadelphia photographer Marriott Canby Morris’s (1863-1948) life’s work.  Morris began taking photos of his family, friends, and environment during his freshman year at Haverford College.  He would continue to document the world around him, taking special care later in life to photograph his three children.

Morris’s photographs of his family and friends give insight into one of Philadelphia’s most prominent Quaker families.  His photographs of the family’s frequent travels and well-appointed homes on the Jersey shore and in Germantown also give a glimpse of the upper middle class at the turn of the 20th century.  However they also provide a record of Morris’s life and his desire to preserve the things he loved through his photographs.

Abolition Seminar
www.abolitionseminar.org

“The Abolitionist Movement: Fighting Slavery and Racial Injustice from the Revolution to the Civil War” is an interactive teaching resource modeled off the Summer Seminar for School Teachers sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and hosted by the Library Company of Philadelphia.

DH Internships

Our internship program has fostered our success in the digital humanities by providing the support needed to develop a wide range of projects. Internship activities often include research, cataloging, metadata cleanup, and scanning.

2016: Hunter Johnson, University of South Carolina
Digital Paxton Project

2015: Kate Philipson, Temple University
African American Walking Tour
Logan Room Visitor Guide

2014: Giles Holbrow, Rochester Institute of Technology
Converted analog media to digital formats
A Day with Google Glass

2013: Jo Dutilloy, Bryn Mawr College
Mikaela Maria, Rutgers University
Cassey & Dickerson Album Project