Cultural institutions are increasingly digitizing records in order to make them more accessible to the public. You don’t need to be a scholar, travel, or potentially damage a document or manuscript in order to study it anymore – just log in and start exploring!

On Friday, January 12, HSP will debut Version Four of our digital library, marking a giant leap forward for accessibility and usability of HSP’s vast digital collection. The biggest change you’ll probably notice is that the digital library will now be accessible in a mobile format! Version Four introduces many more improvements:

• Users can sign in using the same account information on HSP’s PAL, Discover, HSP Encounters, and the HSP website.
• The Lightbox feature allows users to save personal collections of images
• New object displays include additional data from HSP’s records
• Image annotation capability allows users to take notes with the new Tilepics viewer, taking advantage of open-source software created for the archival community
• Instant database synchronization permits faster updates than ever before
• The new system features nightly image updates
• Users can browse records by person, term, century, decade, year, or collection

Much of the work updating the Digital Library was done by our Drexel Co-op student, Will Brown. HSP is proud to be a continuing part of the Co-op program.

You can check out the new digital library starting on Friday, January 12 at digitallibrary.hsp.org on your computer, tablet or phone!