Recognizing the importance of Central American Studies, the Penn Libraries recently acquired a substantial collection of ephemera, books, and audiovisual materials from the region.
Blog post search
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
August 2019
Marian Anderson: The Most Modest Trailblazer
In praise of pretty books
August 2019
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 readingFrontier life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters

This digital collection of primary source documents helps us to understand existence on the edges of the anglophone world from 1650-1920. Discover the various European and colonial frontier regions of North America, Africa and Australasia through documents that reveal the lives of settlers and indigenous peoples in these areas.
...Continue readingLondon Lowlife: Street culture, social reform and the Victorian underworld

Full-text searchable database containing color images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 19th and early 20th century London; designed for both teaching and study, from undergraduate to research students and beyond. Will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including literature, cultural studies, urban studies, and social history.
...Continue readingMedical Services and Warfare, 1850-1927

This database tells the story of medical advances during warfare from the mid-nineteenth century to the outbreak of the influenza epidemic in 1918 and the discovery of penicillin in 1927. The wealth of documents cover multiple conflicts as well as interwar developments from a range of perspectives.
...Continue readingQ&A with Professor Jessa Lingel

Jessa Lingel is an assistant professor at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication. Lingel’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of digital culture with social change: broadly speaking, she studies how communities — especially marginalized communities — employ technology to reinforce their values, objectives, and identities.
...Continue reading