Penn Libraries News

During World War Two and its aftermath, journalism played a vital role in keeping servicemen informed and connected, wherever they happened to be stationed across the world. Service newspapers acted as the mouthpiece of the troops, being variously responsible for:

The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) suggest that nearly 2% of surgeries in the U.S. result in surgical site infections (SSIs) — post-surgical infections occurring in the part of the body where an operation was performed. The mortality rate for SSIs is 3%, which means that for the 14.2 million inpatient operative procedures in 2014, there were an estimated 8,000 SSI-associated deaths. 

By focusing on substantial collections of original archival material from key libraries in Britain and America, Popular Culture provides primary sources enabling students and scholars to examine key issues and events of the period, including:

This database assembles many substantial clusters of material offering in-depth case studies in America, the Caribbean, Brazil and Cuba along with important material examining European, Islamic and African involvement in the slave trade.  The range of material is vast and serves as a complement to the U.S.- and English-focused Slavery and Anti-Slavery database.  It can also be searched with comple

The Penn Libraries have licensed the Collins Bartholomew Mobile Coverage Explorer GIS data collection for use by Penn students, faculty, and staff. These ESRI shapefiles present annual coverages for mobile network providers with individual countries worldwide, starting with 1999 coverages. They are suitable for use with ArcGIS, QGIS, and other mapping software that can recognize the shp shapefile format.

Gender: Identity and Social Change includes primary sources for the study of gender history, women’s suffrage, the feminist movement and the men’s movement. Other key areas represented in the material include: employment and labour, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity and the family.

Everyday Life & Women in America comprises thousands of fully searchable images of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.

The Penn Libraries have joined LAPOP, the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University, as a member institution and data repository.

This resource presents a multi-national journey through well-known, little-known and far-flung destinations unlocked for the average traveller between 1850 and the 1980s.

The ACLU’s Southern Regional Office, which was founded after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, used the provisions of the act, which made segregation in public accomodations unconstitutional, to address violations in the targeted areas of voters’ rights and racial discrimination. Its records offer researchers a unique view of the inner workings of the ACLU’s regional offices and the the organizations with which the ACLU collaborated with such as the NAACP.

The Penn Libraries announces the appointment of Mary Ellen Burd as its inaugural Director of Strategic Communications. This position was established by Constantia Constantinou, H. Carton Rogers III Vice Provost and Director of Libraries, in consultation with the Penn Libraries Board of Overseers and the Libraries’ Leadership team.

The Penn Libraries have purchased J. Walter Thompson : Advertising America, 1887-2014, a digitized collection of advertising materials produced by J. Walter Thompson, one of the world’s oldest, largest, and most innovative advertising firms.

This databases presents highly illustrated primary source documents that highlight commercial tastes and consumer trends, and provide a valuable visual record for a breadth of interdisciplinary study.  Materials on domestic life and consumer culture, especially trade catalogues, are sourced from the University of California, Santa Barbara, while additional material relating to the decorative arts and industry are sourced from Wintherthur and the Hagley Library, respectively.

Earlier this month, Vienna’s tourist board made headlines with its new ad campaign, “Unrating Vienna.” Unrating Vienna uses excerpts from real online reviews plastered over photos of the sites in question; for example, a one-star denunciation that “paintings are disgusting” projected onto the edifice of the Leopold Museum.

This collection consists of Western Americana, including books, pamphlets, posters, ephemera, manuscripts, and other resources, documenting exploration, settlement, travel, daily life and representations of the United States west of the Mississippi.  Central themes include:

Providing access to material from the Newberry Library’s extraordinary Edward E. Ayer collection, this database spans four centuries and covers North and Central America.  Material provides unique insight into interactions between American Indians and Europeans from their earliest contact, continuing through the turbulence of the American Civil War, the ongoing repercussions of government legislation, right up to the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.

The database includes:

This resource contains a wide range of source material relating to popular entertainment in America, Britain and Europe in the period from 1779 to 1930, and shows how interconnected these worlds were. It includes fascinating primary source material in the form of objects, printed books, ephemera, posters, photographs, playbills and more.  The content is broken into four modules:

On May 9, Paley Library — the main campus library of Temple University — officially shut its doors to the public. The closure marked the advent of the summer-long relocation of Paley’s physical collection to Temple’s landmark Charles Library, which will officially open at the beginning of the fall semester. Temple affiliates will not have access to the library’s physical collection in the interim.

From the Eiffel Tower and the Space Needle to the invention of television, chewing gum and hot dogs, world’s fairs have shaped our world. Collating material from archives around the world, this resource offers a unique insight into the phenomenon of international expositions by presenting official records, monographs, personal accounts and ephemera for more than 200 fairs.

American Indian Newspapers aims to present a diverse and robust collection of print journalism from Indigenous peoples of the US and Canada over more than 9,000 individual editions from 1828-2016.