The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is excited to unveil several new Digital Library features and services. Looking for an interesting illustration for your next book or an eye-catching image to display in your home? Now digital images, archival prints, and permission to reproduce, publish, exhibit, and distribute these materials are available directly through HSP’s Digital Library, a growing online repository of over 50,000 images.

If an event takes place, but leaves no evidence of having occurred, did it really happen? Recently, I found myself pondering this historical variation on the age-old question “If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?” when I digitized several items from HSP’s collection of Theater Posters [V06]. As historians and archivists, our understanding of the past is so dependent upon the evidence left behind and some events are so ephemeral they are simply lost to the passage of time.

Since becoming HSP’s Rights and Reproductions Associate in July 2011, I’ve fielded countless questions about what exactly “R&R” entails. I often tell curious folk that I handle orders for digital copies of HSP materials and the rights to publish these materials in books, exhibitions, and other media, but this description only skims the surface of how a reproduction request goes from first contact to completed order. Inspired by my colleague Cary Majewicz’s fabulous blog entry on a day in the life of an archivist, what follows is an insider’s look at a day in MY life as HSP's Rights and Reproductions Associate.