Tag: digital collections

Welcome Back! Spring Hours and Excitement

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January 30, 2012

10:18 am

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Hours, News

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Source: Uploaded by user via Kay on Pinterest

It’s been quite a while since we last saw all our students and faculty.  While we hope everyone had a relaxing and calm intersession, ours was anything but! We’ve been working hard all month long to update, improve, maintain, and increase our Library resources and services, both in person and virtual.  We’ll be posting more detailed announcements throughout the month, but here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming your way in Spring 2012:

We’re excited to have everyone back on campus (even if it means we have to fight for parking spaces again), so stop by anytime to say hi! We’re back on our regular hours for the Spring semester:

Monday-Thursday: 8:00 a.m. – 11:30 p.m.
Friday: 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Saturday: Noon – 8:00 p.m.
Sunday: Noon – 11:30 p.m.

Lackawanna Valley Digital Archives

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December 8, 2011

5:49 pm

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Digital Collections, News, Resources & Technology

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There’s a great new resource available for anyone interested in local history.  The Lackawanna Valley Digital Archives, hosted by the Scranton Public Library and funded by a grant from the Willary Foundation, contains digitized photographs, manuscripts, maps, paintings, letters, and videos related to the history of the Valley and its surrounding areas.

While the Digital Archives will continue to grow, there are already three great collections available to the public:

We’re partial to the Out of the Wilderness collection since it contains Civil War era materials found, described, digitized, and transcribed last spring by University of Scranton history students in Dr. Kathryn Shively Meier’s Civil War class.

The Lackawanna Valley Digital Archives is a collaborative effort involving many of our local cultural heritage institutions, including the Scranton Public Library, the Lackawanna Historical Society, the Steamtown National Historic Site, the Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper library, the Anthracite Heritage Museum, and our own Weinberg Memorial Library.  In addition to the Willary Foundation, other funding partners include the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority and the Scranton Area Foundation. We’re looking forward to working together with all of our colleagues on more digital projects in the future!

For more information, see About LVDA or take a look at Go Lackawanna‘s 500 Vine column from November 20th, “New Digital Service Preserves History.”  You can also subscribe to the Digital Archives’ Facebook page for updates.

Happy Holidays…Zaner-Bloser Style!

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December 1, 2011

12:00 am

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Digital Collections, News

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New Year’s flourish, dated 1896, by C. F. Johnston.

It’s December 1st, temperatures are dropping, and the holiday season is in full swing!  Take a (brief) break from working on those final projects and browse a few images of festive holiday themed penmanship from our Zaner-Bloser Penmanship Collection.

Presidential Inaugurations through the Years

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September 15, 2011

3:30 pm

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Events, News

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Walking around campus, you can see preparations are in full swing for tomorrow’s inauguration of the twenty-fifth president of the University of Scranton, Reverend Kevin P. Quinn, S.J., J.D., Ph.D.  As part of the festivities welcoming Fr. Quinn to the university community, we’d like to share a few images from some of the past presidential inaugurations.

Recently appointed as the eleventh university president, Bro. Eliseus Leonard, F.S.C. (1940-42), shakes hands with his predecessor, Bro. Denis Edward F.S.C. (1931-40).

At his inauguration ceremony, Rev. J. Eugene Gallery, S.J. (1947-53), fourteenth university president, receives a copy of the university’s original charter from Rev. Edward G. Jacklin, vice president of the university and dean of students.  Seated at the far left is Orphans’ Court Judge, James F. Brady.

Diamond anniversary convocation and inauguration of the sixteenth university president, Rev. Edward J. Sponga, S.J. (1963-56). He stands with Rev. William G. Kelly, S.J. (right).

The seventeenth university president, Rev. Aloysius C. Galvin, S.J. (1965-70) along with family members present at his inauguration. From left to right, John T. Galvin (brother), Sister Helen Mercedes, SND (sister), Fr. Galvin, and Mrs. Herbert O’Connor, Jr. (sister).

Inauguration of Rev. William J. Byron, S.J. (right), twenty-first university president (1975-82).  He shakes hands with Rev. Edwin A. Quain, S.J., who served as acting president in 1975.

Rev. J.A. Panuska, S.J. (1982-98) (right), twenty-second university president, receives the University Mace, a symbol of educational authority and institutional identity, from Fr. Byron.

Loyola, Old and New

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August 31, 2011

11:35 am

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Digital Collections, News

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Yesterday’s naming ceremony for the beautiful new Loyola Science Center had us thinking about its older counterpart across the street – Loyola Hall.  At the time of its 1956 dedication, Loyola Hall was considered a model of modernity, a “wonderland of science.” Costing just over $1.1 million, it brought together the University’s four science departments – engineering, physics, biology, and chemistry – under one roof, and even provided a penthouse suite for the University’s radio station.

At yesterday’s ceremony, speakers stressed how the glass walls in the new Loyola Science Center would make the process of science visible and open to all. But in 1956, different materials excited the community’s attention: an Aquinas article highlighted Loyola Hall’s Italian terrazzo floors and stairways, vinyl laboratory floors, and green porcelain and steel chalkboards.  Lockers and bulletin boards lined the halls, and best of all, the University’s scientists could enjoy the luxury of air conditioning as they studied and experimented.

Loyola Hall was the first step in an ambitious plan to construct a true campus for the University on the site of the Scranton Estate.  Then, in 1956, it was a symbol of things to come, a visible testimony to the brightness of the University’s future. Today, it is a vestige of another time, a reminder of how much the University has grown.

The University plans to raze Loyola Hall sometime in the next few years, when Loyola Science Center is complete and fully occupied.  For us, though we’re excited about the new building and look forward to a better view of the Estate, there will always be something special about that plot of land behind the Monroe Avenue wall.

 

New: Electronic Masters and Honors Theses Collection

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February 28, 2011

9:48 am

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Digital Collections, News

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Each year at the University of Scranton, graduating masters and honors students demonstrate their research prowess by writing and defending a scholarly thesis.  Since 1955, the University Library has preserved these works in print form in our Special Collections.

Now, the Weinberg Memorial Library is proud to introduce the new Electronic Masters and Honors Theses Collection, a new digital home for University of Scranton masters and honors student scholarship.

The collection currently includes 359 graduate and undergraduate theses written by University of Scranton students from 1955 to the present.  While the digital collection does not yet include all of the theses the Library holds in print, we are continually adding newly digitized and newly submitted works.  With the permission of their respective authors, these theses are either available to the public or restricted to on-campus users only.

If you’re an alumnus who wrote an honors or masters thesis as part of your University of Scranton coursework and would like to include your thesis in the collection, please visit our Thesis Permission page to find out how you can request that your thesis be digitized.  As in the past, your original printed thesis will still be preserved in the Library’s Special Collections.

Questions or comments about the Electronic Masters and Honors Theses collection may be directed to the Digital Services department at etheses@scranton.edu or 570-941-7003.

UofS Alum Aided Displaced Persons

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October 28, 2010

11:43 am

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Digital Collections, Exhibits, News

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If you’ve been on the 5th floor lately, you might have noticed that we have some of our special collections materials on display as part of the When Humanity Fails exhibit being held at the MAC Gallery.  This exhibit “celebrates the American GIs who liberated Europe and helped nurture the survivors of Nazi persecution back to life,” according to Tova Weiss, director of the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Holocaust Education Resource Center.

If you’d like to learn more about displaced persons and the aftermath of the Holocaust, be sure to browse our new digital collection on Abe L. Plotkin, a 1935 graduate of St. Thomas College (before it became the University of Scranton) who witnessed the liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp and later became a liaison between displaced persons and their relatives and friends in America.  The fully-searchable collection includes Plotkin’s photographs of Ohrdruf and of Holocaust survivors, as well as his correspondence with friends and contacts in American about his experiences abroad.

You can also see some of Plotkin’s original photographs and letters in the 5th floor Heritage Room display cases, now through November 20.

University of Scranton Course Catalogs 1926-2008, now Online

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March 22, 2010

1:50 pm

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Digital Collections, News

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Digitization of special collections is ongoing at the Weinberg Memorial Library, and as a result we’re happy to have one more digital collection available for public use this Spring.

Now online and fully searchable is the University of Scranton Course Catalogs collection, which includes 123 St. Thomas College and University of Scranton undergraduate and graduate course catalogs from 1926 through 2008.  These catalogs will be useful not only for former students seeking course descriptions, but also for local historians and genealogists interested in the University’s history.

University course catalogs from 2007 and earlier were digitized in 2009 by Internet Archive as part of the Lyrasis Mass Digitization Collaborative, a group effort to digitize cultural heritage materials in which the Weinberg Memorial Library has participated since the Fall of 2008.  Each catalog was digitized in full color at 400 dpi, and each image was preserved in JPEG2000 format.  In order to save on server space and make the catalog images faster to download, we’ve uploaded PDF derivatives of those master JPEG2000s into our CONTENTdm collection.  As a result, some of the photographs in the catalogs may appear blurred.  If you’d like a higher resolution copy of a catalog, you can download the original JPEG2000s from Internet Archive by clicking on the Internet Archive URL, stored in each catalog’s “document description.”  And of course, the original printed catalogs are still available in the Library’s University Archives and can be viewed by appointment.

Catalogs from after 2007 are born digital documents, which we’ve downloaded for preservation from University Catalogs web site.

If you have questions about the course catalog collection or about the digitization process, please contact the Digital Services department.  And don’t forget to take a look at our other recent digital collections!

New Digital Collections Home Page

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January 15, 2010

10:32 am

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Digital Collections, News

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It’s been a long time coming, but our new Digital Collections home page is finally up and running!  On this new page, you can find a list of all of our digital collections, from the popular Aquinas Online to our lesser known set of digitized Northeastern Pennsylvania history books housed on Internet Archive. You can also cross search several of our collections, including the University of Scranton Digital Yearbook Collection and the just-released Football Collection.  The page also features information about our collections and notes about what we’re working on next (we’re especially excited about the Electronic Masters and Honors Theses).  We’ll soon be adding an online form that you can use to request your own copies of digital images from our collections.

As with most of our projects, the Digital Collections home page is a work in progress – so please let us know if you have suggestions or comments!

Note: Big, huge thanks to Library Systems Specialist Jen Maher for her work on the new pages.

UofS Football Archives now online

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November 20, 2009

12:29 pm

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Digital Collections, News

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The University of Scranton’s football team may no longer be around (in fact, it’s famous on campus for being “undefeated since 1960”), but at the Weinberg Memorial Library, UofS football is back in a big way.  This week, the Library is proud to announce the University of Scranton Football Collection, a digitized version of our football archives.

The collection includes over a thousand photographs of University of Scranton (and St. Thomas College) football teams, players, coaches, and games – as well as photos of the cheerleaders and marching bands who cheered them on.  The collection also features a set of football game programs.  The programs, produced for each home game, have team rosters, statistics, and game analysis.  Most of the materials come from the years 1900 through 1960, when the varsity football team was disbanded.

This collection isn’t just for UofS football fans, though.  The game programs in particular are a rich resource for researchers interested in the history of Scranton and its surrounding area.  The programs were sponsored by local businesses (like the Hotel Casey), so the booklets serve as miniature “time capsules” showing slices of Scranton life over time.

We invite all students, staff, alumni, and community members to browse and search the collection at www.scranton.edu/library/football.  You may also want to take a look at our brief history of University of Scranton football.

P.S. While we have identified many of the photographs, some are still mysteries.  If you recognize a player, please let us know!

Many thanks to librarian Kay Lopez, library systems specialist Jennifer Maher, and digital services assistant Kevin Pheasey, who all dedicated many hours of hard work to this project.