Dr. John Nietz
The founder of the Nietz Old Textbook
Collection, the late Professor Emeritus
John A. Nietz, was born near Toledo, Ohio
in 1888. He earned an A.B. degree at Ohio
Northern University in 1914, his M.A. at
Ohio State University in 1919, and a Ph.D.
in Education at the University of Chicago
in 1933. During his stay at the University
of Chicago, Nietz studied under the famous
philosopher and educational theorist, John
Dewey.
Dr. Nietz spent much of his career at the
University of Pittsburgh teaching in the
School of Education. When he retired in
1958, he founded the Nietz Old Textbook
Collection by donating his 9,000 volume
library of early primary and secondary
school texts. He had acquired the texts to
demonstrate the history of teaching in the
early years of the United States. During
his career, Dr. Nietz directed or advised
over 30 dissertations and master's theses
based upon the collection. Dr. Nietz died
in 1970.
Since its establishment, the collection has
grown to over 16,000 volumes through gifts
and purchases.
Creation of the Digital Collection
The idea of creating a digital library of
items selected from the Nietz Old Textbook
Collection was explored by the Digital
Research Library Planning Working Group.
Members of the working group started
scanning full color images of book pages in
October 1997. As a proof of concept, three
books were scanned and processed for Web
display.
In 1999, the project was re-designed to
provide page images as well as searchable
text, using methodologies borrowed from the
Historic Pittsburgh Full-Text Collection. A
sample of thirty titles was selected for
scanning by an imaging vendor. Searchable
text was generated from the images through
use of PrimeRecognition, batch OCR
software. The text was encoded
automatically in SGML. For detailed
description of selection criteria, legal
issues, tools, techniques, vendors and
software incorporated in the production of
searchable text, please visit the
Historic Pittsburgh Web site.
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