Recognizing the importance of Central American Studies, the Penn Libraries recently acquired a substantial collection of ephemera, books, and audiovisual materials from the region.
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Penn Libraries Establishes Lecture Series on Global Subjects
The newly endowed Park-Choi Lecture Series supports the Penn Libraries’ ongoing commitment to meaningful engagement with individuals, institutions, and communities through scholarship support and programming.
University of Pennsylvania Libraries Announces Brian Vivier as Inaugural Director of the Center for Global Collections
In his new role, he will provide strategic vision, leadership, and oversight for the Center in building world-class distinctive global collections and engaging programming.
Making Science Labs Safer at the University of Pennsylvania
It’s the job of Penn's Office of Environmental Health and Radiation Safety (EHRS) to develop, implement, and manage the systems that keep the university's many science labs as safe as possible. But in the last few years, the team has begun turning to chemistry librarian Judith Currano as a vital partner in these processes.
Summer Featured Books and DVDs: For the Love of Food
Some of us eat to live, and some of us live to eat. For some of us, making and eating food can also be a rich source for cultural analysis and storytelling. This month’s featured materials show some of the many ideas and values food can represent.
New eBook Subscription: Harvard Business Publishing Collection
Just in time for summer reading season, the Penn Libraries has subscribed to the Harvard Business Review ebooks package from EBSCO.
Books on the Move: Changes in the Van Pelt Stacks
Through Summer 2023, the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center stacks are undergoing a multi-phase refresh and reorganization.
Diversity in the Stacks: Highlights from the Penn Sexuality Collection
The Penn Sexuality Collection will add materials to the Penn Libraries that fall outside the usual purview of academic libraries, helping to make the Libraries a destination for sexuality researchers.
Rebuilding Rare Books in a Virtual Space: A Conversation with Curator Dot Porter
We recently sat down with curator Dot Porter to talk about how she tries to bring very old books to life in the digital world.
June Featured Books and DVDs: Pride Month
Penn’s LGBT Center will be kicking off their Pride activities with a Queer Dance Class on Friday, June 3 , and will be hosting special events throughout the month. In the meantime, LGBT Center staff provided the Penn Libraries with the following recommendations, each of which offers an an inspiring and enriching reading or watching experience
July 2019
A deep dive into digital humanities at Penn
Source:
Penn Today
July 2019
Service Newspapers of World War Two
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:
...Continue readingBiomedical Library Teams Up with CEP to Protect Patient Health
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.
...Continue readingPopular culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975: rock and roll, counterculture, peace and protest
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:
...Continue readingLocal Bangla School Visits Penn’s South Asia Collection
“There’s something quite powerful about people coming together to look at a text or watch a film in the language of their home country,” says Mallika Sircar, Library Specialist in Penn Libraries’ South Asia Collection.Since 2015, Sircar has helped coordinate bi-annual library visits for the Shopan Bangla School.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Change, 1490-2007
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
...Continue readingMobile Coverage Explorer: Global mobile telecom network shapefiles
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.
...Continue readingGender Identity and Social Change
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.
...Continue readingEveryday Life and Women in America, 1800-1920
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.
...Continue readingLAPOP: Latin American public opinion poll datasets
The Penn Libraries have joined LAPOP, the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University, as a member institution and data repository.
...Continue readingLeisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism
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.
...Continue readingAmerican Civil Liberties Union Papers, Part II: Southern Regional Office
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.
...Continue readingMary Ellen Burd Hired as Director of Strategic Communications for Penn Libraries
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.
...Continue readingJ. Walter Thompson: Advertising America, 1887-2014
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.
...Continue readingTrade Catalogues and the American Home, 1850-1950
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.
...Continue readingFeatured Books Display: Travel
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.
...Continue readingAmerican West: Sources from the Everett Graff Collection at the Newberry Library
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:
...Continue readingAmerican Indian Histories and Cultures: Sources from the Newberry Library
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:
...Continue readingVictorian Popular Culture
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:
...Continue readingIn This City Of Libraries, Temple and Penn Collaborate To Ensure Summer Access
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.
...Continue readingWorld’s Fairs: A Global History of Expositions
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.
...Continue readingMass Obs Online : British “anthropology of ourselves”, 1937-1967
This resource reproduces an enormous body of material that describes everyday life of ordinary people in Britain from the eve of World War II through the mid-1950s and beyond.
American Indian Newspapers
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.
...Continue readingThe First World War: A Global Conflict
This database module includes enhanced coverage of the Eastern Front, Southern Front, Russia, Balkans, Gallipoli, North Africa, Middle East, global activities of organizations such as the Red Cross, and firsthand accounts, photographs, and other documentation of participants and activities around the world.
