Free Library of Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition Digital Collection

[Elizabeth McKenty]

Apologies for cross-posting

The nation's 100th Birthday Party recorded in rare photographs--The Free Library of Philadelphia creates digital collection and web site

The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 marked a turning point in the history of 
the United States.  The numerous innovative and industrial exhibits help to 
trace the nation's emergence from an agricultural-based economy to a highly 
industrial one, showing the country's readiness to compete with established 
world powers.   

The Free Library of Philadelphia was awarded a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to digitize a unique historical collection of over 1,200 silver albumen photographs and other material relating to the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.  This recently completed one-year project is the first whole-collection 
digitization effort by the Library.  It is intended to serve as a model for 
future digitization projects within the Library and for other institutions 
embarking on similar projects.  Users can now access, browse and search the 
digital images through the Free Library's web site and through its online catalog, with full MARC records.  The Centennial Exhibition Digital Collection is available at the following web address:

http://libwww.library.phila.gov/CenCol/index.htm

It can also be accessed through the Free Library's web site at:

http://www.library.phila.gov

Highlights of the Collection include a hand-written diary of a visiting 
teenager as well as various virtual tours of the buildings and exhibits.  
Don't miss the "Centennial Schoolhouse" for fun things for kids and 
activities for teachers and parents.

Jeffrey A. Cohen, a scholar at Bryn Mawr College, aptly describes the 
Centennial as being "
 played against the backdrop of the boldly new yet 
historically enmeshed forms of Victorian architecture, with massive new 
machines and products in the foreground, and between them an American public visiting in an unprecedented gathering in their Sunday best, for the first time effectively before the world.  As effectively as an enormous volume of prints and documents and books and memorabilia record this event, it is photography that brings it most fully to life, and these images, by the Centennial's official photographers, are among the very best ever made of the Centennial.  They have the capacity to bring it alive for a wide range of audiences, from the elementary-school student to the well-immersed scholar, for they awaken a humanness, a texture, and an unfiltered immediacy that spawns insight."

For additional information, please contact Joe Benford, Curator, Print and 
Picture Collection, The Free Library of Philadelphia, 215-686-5405, 
benfordj at library.phila.gov

Thank you.

Elizabeth J. McKenty
Library Coordinator
The Office of Public Service Support
Free Library of Philadelphia
mckentye at library.phila.gov

--
Elizabeth McKenty
The Office of Public Services Support
Free Library of Philadelphia
215.686.5372
mckentye at library.phila.gov

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