STORIES FROM THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION RECORDS3 I’m very pleased to share that I’ve completed processing an additional 142 boxes of documents from the Philadelphia Orchestra Association records, which are now listed on the finding aid site and are available for research at Penn Libraries. These represent a majority of the collection’s administrative documents that ..read more

I had the honor of cataloging a small photograph album put together by an unknown, female Holocaust survivor in early May. Although there is little information about the album’s creator, the photographs give unique insight into life after the Holocaust, mainly the experience of living as a displaced person in post-war Europe. Below is a ..read more

Recently cataloged for the Caroline F. Schimmel Collection of Women in the American Wilderness is a copy of the 1940s children’s book Hermie’s Trailer House, written by Muriel Lewin Guberlet (professor of English at the University of Washington and biographer of biologist Trevor Kincaid) and illustrated by Pacific Northwest artist Marjorie Kincaid Illman. Dedicated on ..read more

On the morning of 1 July 1863, elements of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia converged on the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Over the next three days 165,620 men (93,921 Union and 71,699 Confederate) would be engaged in the epic battle, resulting in an estimated 51,112 casualties (23,049 Union and ..read more

Despite working every day in the Van Pelt Library within the Penn Libraries system, to me, the word “library” conjures a very different picture: it is me walking out of a public library during summer vacation with a stack of books that would transport me into exciting and exotic worlds that were very different than ..read more

STORIES FROM THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION RECORDS On a presumably chilly winter’s day 115 years ago, someone faithfully recorded the meeting minutes of the very early leadership of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association: December 8, 1908 Mr. Van Rensselaer took the chair. Mr. Van Rensselaer said that, to avoid further unnecessary discussion, he wished to remark ..read more

In October 1796 Matthew Gregory Lewis, M.P., aged twenty-one, revealed himself to be the author of the recently published triple-decker The Monk and all hell broke loose. Lewis had embraced the “Gothic imagination” popularized by Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe that “inspir[ed] terror and power … by creating sublime effects” (Groom 77). But instead of ..read more

Guest Author Stephen Hall, Computer Science & Engineering Librarian, University of Pennsylvania Libraries “Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary;sweeten my imagination. There’s money for thee” -King Lear, Act IV.6.145-146 When weighing or measuring things, we typically think of either the metric or imperial systems. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, numerous other systems have been used ..read more

Among the chief pleasures of working in archives are the stories embedded within each collection. Archival collections—amalgamations of manuscripts, printed records, photographs, media, and other forms of records—are windows into the worlds of their creators, and they not only reflect their work and achievements, but also their values and the memories of the time and ..read more

The Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica contains a multitude of different mediums from books to playing cards to painted portraits. Some of the most prevalent items in the collection, combined to total over 2,900 items, are billheads, letters and envelopes from Jewish businesses. Along with the rich business history these little ..read more