Following the success of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Chew Family Papers blog, which chronicled the processing of one of our largest collections of family papers, we have decided to share with you a broader behind-the-scenes view of our archives and conservation departments.   Our staff are working on a wide variety of projects--installing and putting into operation our new digital camera; metadata cleanup in MANX (our manuscripts database); conservation of books, pamphlets, maps, photographs, and posters; processing collections; digitizing maps and surveys; and rethinking ways of processing pre-twentieth century collections.

We have a lot to share with you, especially since we are at the start of our pilot project to launch the new Digital Center for Americana.  We are beginning this exciting venture with 51 Civil War collections, which will be processed, conserved, described, and selectively digitized.  We will share more news on this project in the coming months.  We are also participating in the PACSCL Hidden Collections Processing Project, which will make accessible some of Philadelphia's richest collections.  Of course, aside from these projects, there are many individual collections and items that receive our routine attention and care.  We will update you about recently processed collections, tell you about the things that excite us in our collections, and discuss the important work being done at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make our collections accessible and available to researchers.

We hope you will enjoy this window into the archives and conservation departments at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Fondly,

Cathleen Miller, Project Archivist