Purpose and Intended Audience

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.

The Full-Text Collection

Most of the materials in Historic Pittsburgh's Full-Text Collection were published or produced before the early 1920s and are out of print or not readily accessible. These materials cover the growth and development of Pittsburgh and the surrounding Western Pennsylvania area from the period of exploration and settlement to the period of industrial revolution and modernization.

Items that offer information thought to be, or to approximate, primary source materials are given priority over items considered to be interpretive history. The collection also includes representative works of the general history of Pittsburgh. It should be understood that Historic Pittsburgh does not represent a complete body of work that covers the entire history of the region, but rather an informed selection of materials that should serve to introduce and assist in the scholarly study of Pittsburgh and the surrounding Western Pennsylvania area.

Some of the original source materials used for Historic Pittsburgh may have marginalia, torn pages, or other physical defects which appear on the digital images. Every effort possible has been made to maintain the integrity and ensure the completeness of each item. In some cases, though, an item with limited missing information may be included in the collection because its content has siginificant research value.

History and Background of the Historic Pittsburgh Project

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 (ULS) 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.

Although Historic Pittsburgh is not considered a preservation reformatting project, the preservation needs of the original materials used in the project are being addressed in various ways. Preservation mainly is accomplished by producing acid-free facsimile reprints to replace brittle and deteriorating items. Other methods of preservation are being employed on a case-by-case basis.

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Historic Pittsburgh is hosted by the University of Pittsburgh's Digital Research Library.