Fondly, Pennsylvania
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Fondly, Pennsylvania
Fondly, Pennsylvania is HSP's main blog. Here you will find posts on our latest projects and newest discoveries, as well articles on interesting bits of local history reflected in our collection. Whether you are doing research or just curious to know more about the behind-the-scenes work that goes on at HSP, please read, explore, and join the conversation!
I’ve been working on processing a collection of Wister family papers – now known as the Wister and Butler families papers (collection #1962) – that contain papers of Pierce Butler, his former wife Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble, their daughters Sarah Butler Wister and Frances Butler Leigh, and many other family members.
Last month, the Conservation Department welcomed Don Rash for a leather conservation workshop. Rash is an esteemed fine binder and book artist who works out of Wyoming, PA.
I never thought that when working as an Archives Intern at HSP I would come across a collection that had some personal resonance. But when handed the Robert Proud collection to process, I learned that history can connect to one’s life in bizarre ways.
Portrait of Robert Proud, print of phototype by Gutekunst (undated)
Along with a few other collections, we recently listed our collection of records from the Women's Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (WPSPCA) among our Adopt-A-Collections that you can check out in our new shop! There you can find out more information or you can read one of our previous posts about this program. In a nutshell, by adopting one
As one of the digitization technicians for the Digital Center of Americana, I come across a lot of correspondence. When I have a moment to read some of the letters I often ask myself what may have caused the writer to send this particular set of words to his loved one, family member, boss, or friend. Many times the letter I am scanning is a response to a letter that we do not have in our collection, and without having the time to research the item I am left to wonder what started the exchange.
I recently finished processing the Citizens’ Bounty Fund Committee records, another Civil War-era collection that we are working on as part of the Digital Center for Americana project.
One of the major challenges we face at HSP with the Digital Center for Americana project is just how to deal with pesky legacy data. Getting information online to improve access is great and all, but it takes a lot of effort to select, customize, and design systems so they can function together, integrate data from older systems (legacy data) and then provide the easy online access we have all come to expect.
From rotting leather bindings to unstable photographic materials to fragile, crumbling papers held together with aged plastic tape, there are a plethora of challenges faced when preserving historic documents and books. The condition of materials is based upon many factors including how the documents are currently housed, how they were stored prior to becoming part of the Society’s collections, and how they were treated as they were created or originally collected. The following images are from A Manual of the Art of Bookbinding. Published in 1856, James B.
As we've stated before here on this blog, there's alot more to HSP's archives than just old correspondence and records. HSP's conservation staff recently finished work on our Work Projects Administration (WPA) posters collection, which was adopted last year. The collection contains works from the 1930s and 1940s from mostly Pennsylvania artists who were employed under the Pennsylvani
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