Historic Pittsburgh provides online access to a portion of the archival and manuscript collections held by several local cultural heritage institutions in Pittsburgh, namely the Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh, Library & Archives at the Heinz History Center, Carnegie Museum of Art,Carnegie Museum of Natural History Archives, Oakmont Carnegie Library, Historical Society of Upper St. Clair, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Northland Public Library, Chatham University Archives, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Archives, Point Park University Archives, Rodef Shalom Congregation, Monroeville Historical Society, and Pitcairn Historical Society. It is managed and hosted by the Digital Research Library within the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh.
Although Historic Pittsburgh welcomes its use by anyone interested in the Pittsburgh area, its primary purpose is to facilitate the study and research of students, faculty, scholars, and historians. It provides an alternative means of access to materials that otherwise could not be viewed at one time or in one place as a single coherent collection. Also, the full-text searching and other access tools of the project enable faster and more efficient means of finding information.
Project Background
In early 1998, discussions between the Digital Research Library Planning Working Group, bibliographers, History Department faculty, Archives Service Center, and the University Librarian resulted in the idea for the Historic Pittsburgh project. The project was initiated once a project team was appointed and funding provided. Soon afterward, the University Library System became a member of the University of Michigan's SGML Server Support Program. This membership allowed the ULS to use the middleware developed for the Making of America digital library as a basis for the Historic Pittsburgh project.
A pilot Web site was created for demonstration purposes. By the end of 1998, the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania became an official partner of Historic Pittsburgh. Also at this time, funding to develop a digital collection was provided by the Hillman Library Endowment.
A digital production librarian was appointed to the project in January 1999. Two production assistants were added shortly thereafter. In early spring, a contract was arranged with Northern Micrographics in La Crosse, Wisconsin, for scanning and reformatting original materials with bound facsimile reprints. Another contract was signed with Chapman Corporation in Washington, Pennsylvania, for scanning plat-book maps.
Ten years later, the project continues to grow in its content and technical capabilities. The Archives Service Center coordinates new content to add to the site while the majority of the new content is digitized in-house by the ULS Digital Research Library, now comprised of three full-time scanning technicians and a variety of digitization equipment.
For more information about each component of the Web site, please see below:
- About the Full-Text Collection
- About the G.M. Hopkins Maps
- About the Image Collections
- About the Finding Aids
- About the Census Schedules
- About the Chronology
- About Vendors and Software
For more information on the workflow and procedures for the Historic Pittsburgh project, please refer to the DRL Project Documentation webpage.