Digital Research Library - News

More Hopkins Maps Added to Historic Pittsburgh

As part of an ongoing effort to identify and digitize all the Hopkins maps produced for Pittsburgh between 1872 and 1940, we added eight more real estate plat maps of Pittsburgh created by the G.M. Hopkins Company to the Historic Pittsburgh Maps Collection. They include an 1882 atlas; Volume 3, Volume 4 and Volume 5 [1890]; Volume 1 [1898]; Volume 2 [1899]; a 1910 atlas; and Volume 2 [1914]. Twelve more volumes will be coming soon in the following months.

Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection Updated

We are pleased to announce the largest update to the Archives Service Center's online Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection with the addition of nearly 2,000 digitized images. The new images are part of an initiative to reformat all the glass plate negatives in the Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection (AIS.1971.05) to facilitate preservation and access. The images found in the newest addition, which represent the earliest ones in the collection (1901-1908), document improvements to city infrastructure, such as the construction of the Aspinwall and Ross Pumping Stations, the development and condition of roads in many neighborhoods (e.g., Shadyside, Point Breeze, and Morningside, among others), and residents and construction workers in these neighborhoods.

Ancestors: House-by-House Search Retraces an Ancestor

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer Patricia Lowry wrote about her use of the Historic Pittsburgh website in tracing Joanne Baker's great-grandfather, Timothy D. Casey. She cites several publications from the website, including city directories. Read article.

Improvements Using the Hopkins Maps

To improve your experience navigating the G.M. Hopkins Company Maps, we now offer viewing of the maps through the Zoomify interface. This enables a big improvement when zooming and moving around in a map. We also now offer two methods for browsing the Hopkins maps. In addition to browsing the maps using the Index page, we offer thumbnail browsing of entire volumes. Also note that you can now freely download map plate images as 200 dpi JPEG files for noncommercial and educational purposes.

HSWP Catalog Now Hosted by Heinz History Center

The Library & Archives at the Heinz History Center now serves its own online catalog to users of their library collection. The HSWP Catalog, as it has been known on Historic Pittsburgh, was hosted for many years by the ULS Digital Research Library; it is now hosted independently by the Heinz History Center. Please visit their new online catalog to search for books, archival collections, periodicals, and more from their collection.

Separate Search for Historic City Directories

To improve the usefulness of our full-text search, we have separated the full-text City Directories into a new collection that may be searched alone, or in combination with the Historic Pittsburgh General Text Collection. The Historic Pittsburgh City Directories collection contains 125 directories published between 1815 and 1945. The majority of the directories were published by J.F. Diffenbacher and R.L. Polk & Company. While most of the directories cover Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, a portion includes Homestead and nearby boroughs.

To search the directories alone, simply visit the collection's home page; to search directories in combination with all Historic Pittsburgh full-text content, visit the Historic Pittsburgh Full-Text page.

New Image Collection Released

Today we added a new image collection from the Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh to the Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections: Ken Kobus Photograph Collection. The online collection features 246 images documenting the railroad and steel industries in Pennsylvania taken primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s. CONRAIL and the LTV Steel Company are the main focus of the collection while secondary points of interest include the Pennsylvania Railroad, Union Pacific Railroad, Amtrak, and Union Switch and Signal.

Historic Pittsburgh Chronology Updated

The Historic Pittsburgh Chronology was updated to include events from 2008.

Chatham University Archives Image Collection Updated

Chatham College has added new images to the Historic Pittsburgh image collection.

Chatham Image Collection Updated

Chatham College has added new images to the Historic Pittsburgh image collection.

Welcome Point Park University Archives as a New Partner!

We welcome Point Park University Archives as our sixth local institution to contribute images to Historic Pittsburgh. They contributed an initial 98 images to the Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections site. The online collection represents the dynamic life of Point Park University and the surrounding area.

New Archival Finding Aids from the Archives Service Center

The Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh has added 49 new archival finding aids (and updated 30 others) to the Historic Pittsburgh Finding Aids Collection.

Latest Additions Push Full-Text Collection Over 1,000 Items

In 2008, we nearly doubled the number of books in our Historic Pittsburgh Full-Text Collection. There are currently 1,039 volumes available online, totalling 272,996 pages, all of them full-text searchable. Use this link to see only items added in 2008.

New Archival Finding Aids from the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania

The Library and Archives of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania has added 30 new archival finding aids to the Historic Pittsburgh Finding Aids Collection.

Two New Image Collections Released

Today two new image collections from the Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh were added to Historic Pittsburgh:

The Bruce Drisbach images depict the construction of the American Steel & Wire Company building, equipment, and worker housing construction in Donora.

The Progress Photographs show the construction of the William Penn Hotel in chronological order, including the groundbreaking ceremony held on July 7, 1914. The photographs in this album were taken every two weeks to show construction progress.

Historic Pittsburgh Chronology Updated

The Historic Pittsburgh Chronology was updated to include events from 2007.

Historic Pittsburgh Maps in the Darlington Digital Library

Of the hundreds of maps now available in this collection, over 70 of them were created in the mid-18th through early-20th centuries and depict Pittsburgh or Allegheny County, including maps of Fort Pitt, plans of Pittsburgh, maps of Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities, Bird's-eye maps of Carnegie, Duquesne, Glassport, Homestead, and other western Pennsylvania cities.

Chatham Image Collection Updated

Chatham College has added new images to the Historic Pittsburgh image collection.

Chatham Image Collection Updated

Chatham College has added new images to the Historic Pittsburgh image collection.

Chatham Image Collection Updated

Chatham College has added new images to the Historic Pittsburgh image collection.

Chatham Image Collection Updated

Chatham College has added new images to the Historic Pittsburgh image collection.

New Books Added

We are adding books to the Historic Pittsburgh Full-Text Collection on a weekly basis. To see a list of new books, please visit this link.

Historic Pittsburgh Celebrates Pittsburgh's 250th Anniversary

In recognition of Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary, we are adding hundreds of newly digitized titles to the full-text collection throughout the year. Today, we added 157 new titles. The 250th anniversary marks the naming of the city by General John Forbes. In 1758, shortly after taking possession of the abandoned remnants of French Fort Duquesne at the Point, Forbes named the city in honor of the English Prime Minister Sir William Pitt.

Three New Image Collections Added and Updates

We added three new Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections and updated a fourth. Images are now available from the Archives Service Center's Pittsburgh Print Collection and Rust Engineering Company Records as well as from the Heinz History Center's Charles M. Stotz Collection. We also added 181 images to the Frank B. Fairbanks Rail Transportation Archive from the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.

Historic Pittsburgh Chronology Updated

The Historic Pittsburgh Chronology was updated to include events from 2006.

"Zoomify" View Added To Maps

Two of our map collections now use the "Zoomify" tool for map viewing. Zoomify allows for dynamic zooming and panning within a high-resoultion map image, without the need to reload the entire page each time. A navaigation thumbnail shows which section of the map is currently on display. Give it a try, and let us know what you think. The two map collections using Zoomify are the City of Pittsburgh Geodetic and Topographic Survey and Maps from the Report of the Flood Commission of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, 1912.

New Finding Aids Added

We added 16 new archival finding aids from the University of Pittsburgh's Archives Service Center to the Historic Pittsburgh Finding Aids Collection.

New Partner and Image Collection Added

We welcome Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation as a new institutional partner contributing images to our Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections site. Today we released a collection of images from The Frank B. Fairbanks Rail Transportation Archive. This online collection contains slides taken by Mr. Fairbanks between 1948 to 1987 that document train engines and stations in the western Pennsylvania area. He spent his entire adult life riding, documenting, and collecting material from rail lines all over the world.

Upgraded Format for Historic Pittsburgh News

We've upgraded the Historic Pittsburgh News page to use a blogging software tool (we're using blosxom). As a result, you can now subscribe to an RSS feed of our news items. If you're not familiar with RSS feeds or how to read them, these Wikipedia articles on RSS and aggregators (feed readers) will get you started.

Also, please note that the URL to the news page has changed to
http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/news/historic_pittsburgh/.
Please update your bookmarks and links accordingly.

New Additions to Full-Text Collection

We added a collection of Homestead city directories as well as a history of Crafton to the Historic Pittsburgh Full-Text Collection.

Two New Map Collections Released

We added two new map collections to Historic Pittsburgh. The City of Pittsburgh Geodetic and Topographic Survey Maps (1923-1961) contain 171 plates that depict contours and spot heights of much of Allegheny County. The Flood Commission of Pittsburgh maps (1912) contain 14 plates produced as part of the Report of the Flood Commission. They depict the results of the surveys, investigations and studies made by the commission for the purpose of determining the causes of, damage by, and methods of relief from floods in the Allegheny, Monogahela and Ohio rivers at Pittsburgh.

Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections Update

We added 83 new images to the Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections from the following collections: Darlington Family Photographs, Kingsley Association, Pittsburgh City Photographer, and University Archives.

Bungee View and Image Collection Updates

In conjunction with CMU research scientist Mark Derthick, we now offer an experimental visualization prototype called Bungee View for viewing selected Historic Pittsburgh image collections.

We also added 133 new images to the Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections from the following collections: Chatham College Archives, Darlington Family Photographs, Kingsley Association, Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad, Edward J. Shourek, and University Archives.

Two New Image Collections Released, and Updates

We released two new Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections from the Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh: CONSOL Energy Mining Archives and the Edward J. Shourek Collection. We also added 97 new images from the Pittsburgh City Photographer collection and Chatham College Archives.

Chronology Updated

The Historic Pittsburgh Chronology was updated to include events from 2005.

New Finding Aids Added

We added 62 new archival finding aids from the University of Pittsburgh's Archives Service Center to the Historic Pittsburgh Finding Aids Collection.

Image Collections Updated

We added a total of 147 new images from the Chatham College Archives collection as well as the Pittsburgh City Photographer and UE News collections held by the Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh to the Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections.

New Partner and Image Collection

We welcome Chatham College Archives as a new institutional partner contributing images to our Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections site. Today we released a small collection of images that begins to chronicle the students, faculty, and college community as academic pursuits, college events, student life and social activities have grown and changed throughout the college's history. More images will be added to the site in the coming months.

New Image Collection and Updates

A new Historic Pittsburgh Image Collection was added documenting the city of Pittsburgh in the 1940�s and 1950�s before and after smoke control ordinances were passed regulating the burning of coal: Smoke Control Lantern Slides. We also added 205 new images to the Pittsburgh City Photographer and University Archives collections maintained by the Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

Image Collections Updated

200 new images from the following collections held by the Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh were added to the Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections: Pittsburgh City Photographer, Irene Kaufmann, and University Archives.