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Select a collection from the list at left to view a description and links to the web site that has been developed for the collection. |
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The Schoenberg Collection includes three separate on line sites:
- A private library of manuscripts focusing on the late Medieval and early Renaissance periods. This site includes full bibliographic information for over 400 manuscripts and online facsimiles for more than 30.
- An on line catalog of the Schoenberg manuscript colleciton.
- A searchable database that includes catalog descriptions of almost 100,000 early manuscripts written prior to 1600. The descriptions are derived primarily from auction and dealer records..
Schoenberg Collection home pageEdgar Fahs Smith (1854-1928) was a professor of chemistry and a provost of the University of Pennsylvania.
The Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection is devoted to the history of chemistry, emphasizing the periods prior to 1850. The collection includes monographs on chemistry, alchemy and related fields. In addition, there are more than 3,000 prints, engravings and photographs of eminent scientists, their laboratories and the apparatus they used.
The Furness Memorial (Shakespeare) Library at Penn was begun by Horace Howard Furness, Sr. and continued by Howard Furness, Jr. It makes available their work on the Variorum Edition of the works of Shakespeare. This is a collection of primary and secondary sources, including both texts and images, that illuminate the theater, literature, the history of Shakespeare, Shakespearian texts, theatrical production and criticism.
Furness Collection home pageThe English Renaissance in Context (ERIC) is a NEH-funded project designed to provide scholars and students at a variety of levels with access to major texts of the English Renaissance in their original versions. ERIC grows out of both contemporary critical tendencies in the field of English Renaissance studies and a commitment to providing broad access to original source materials that would otherwise be out of reach for many.
ERIC comprises two separate but integrated units: a set of tutorials on some of Shakespeare's plays and on the making and selling of books during the Early Modern period; and a database of scanned texts (thanks to the work of SCETI) from Penn's Furness Shakespeare Library. When used in combination, these two units can provide students with a rich introduction to English Renaissance literature in its historical and artifactual context.
In 2000, the Penn Library and the Taylor-Schechtor Genizah Research Unit of the Cambridge University Library began planning for a collaborative effort to reunite virtually the dispersed fragments from the Cairo Genizah. Thanks to a generous gift from Mr. Jeffrey Keil, Penn alumnus and member of the Penn Library's Board of Overseers, this collaborative effort has led to the creation of a pilot web site that displays, for the first time, selected holdings of two distinct institutions.
Documents from the Cairo Genizah date from the 9th through the 15th centuries. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Judeo-Arabic, they catalogue the social, cultural, and religious lives of Jews around the Mediterranean basin. The fragments were discovered in the late 19th century in the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat, a neighborhood in Old Cairo. While most of the fragments eventually wound up at Cambridge, many came to North America.
A web presentation of the full content of almost 90 neighborhood planning surveys prepared and published by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission between 1946 and 1990.
These reports contain descriptions of current conditions of housing stock; population trends; property turnover; public transportation; community activity. Recommendations are made for future action. The project will facilitate university and public research on Philadelphia's architectural and social environment. The reports are a primary resource for the study of how the problems and aspirations of Philadelphia neighborhoods were described during decades of debate about urban renewal in Philadelphia. At the same time, the initiative aligns with the University's stated commitment to Philadelphia as an urban environment.
The University of Pennsylvania Art Collection is a remarkable collection of 5,700 art objects and artifacts acquired over the past 250 years. The Collection is exhibited in various buildings and outdoor spaces throughout the main campus, the Morris Arboreteum and the New Bolton Center. It contains paintings, graphics, photographs, sculpture, decorative objects and artifacts.
The University of Pennsylvania Art Collection home pageTheodore Dreiser (1871-1945) was a novelist, story writer, autobiographer, essayist, political writer, travel writer, playwright, poet, journalist, editor and diarist. He is now regarded as one of the pre-eminent American novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, an anatomist of the “American dream”. Dreiser was instrumental in establishing the American city and especially the experiences of working-class people striving for economic, emotional, and spiritual fulfillment, as viable subjects for serious fiction. (Jude Davies, King Alfred’s College)
Theodore Dreiser home pageThis collection is comprised of over 1,000 items documenting the history of the Dreyfus Affair and its impact on the art, society, and politics of France and the modern world. All of the major events of the Affair, from the wrongful conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason in 1894, to Emile Zola's galvanizing statement headlined "J'Accuse . . .!" in 1898, to Dreyfus' long awaited exoneration in 1906 are represented by original items in the collection.
The collection contains examples of the diverse genres and formats of printed matter from the period. These include posters, roadsides, newspapers, magazines, prints, caricatures, books, and postcards. In addition to highlighting the crucial role of the media in the Affair, these documents remain provocative and visually arresting even over a century later.
This archive enables students and other researchers to use primary documents in their study of political, economic, social, religious, racial and gender issues from the Jacksonian Era to the Gilded Age.
This collection is comprised of pamphlets, books, broadsides, cartoons, clippings, paintings, maps, and other print memorabilia about America from circa 1830 to 1880. Items are drawn primarily from the collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Links to other catalogues and collections are also available from this site. The contents were first identified for inclusion in the Library Company's Exhibit, "The Origins of the Republican Party," Phillip Lapsansky, curator, Robert Francis Engs and Randall Miller, historical consultants. An electronic record of the exhibit may be reached from this site.
To celebrate the Tercentenary of Benjamin Franklin's birth in 2006, the Penn Library and the University Archives present Penn in the Age of Franklin-a virtual space to sample the University's earliest past.
Benjamin Franklin was instrumental in organizing and shaping Penn from its inception. He was President of the College, Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia from 1749 to 1755, and served continuously as trustee until his death in 1790. Franklin was responsible for the hiring of William Smith as the first provost in 1754. The partnership of Franklin and Penn is played out against the background of the creation of both a new republic and of higher education in America.
The documents and manuscripts, printed books and artifacts are from the Penn Library and the University Archives.
Located in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Pennsylvania, The Robert and Molly Freedman Jewish Music Archive currently contains over 1800 recordings, primarily in Yiddish and Hebrew. LP phonograph albums, cassettes, and CD's comprise the archive's catalogued holdings.
Over 28,000 entries in the trilingual database catalog - English, Yiddish, and Hebrew- all include the title of each track or band of the recording, its author or authors, composer(s) where known, performers and so called "key words" as well as references to publications (available at the archive) in which original text, transliteration, translation and melody line of the recorded song or poem are published.
The Morais Ledger belonged to Sabato Morais (1823-1897), a Sephardic Jewish leader, Hebraist, poet, historian, lecturer and teacher. Morais received his rabbinical training in his native Livorno (Leghorn), Italy and served as the Minister of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia from 1851 until his death in November of 1897. He was the principal founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary, established in New York City in 1886, and was the first Jew to receive an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Pennsylvania in 1887.
Morais kept a 500 page personal scrapbook in which 831 discrete items, including newspaper clippings, pamphlets, circulars and typescripts, have been pasted to its ledger-sized pages.
The Introduction to the Marvin Weiner Catalogue of the Sabato Morais Ledger describes the history of the Ledger.
Marian Anderson (1898-1992) was renowned throughout the world for her extraordinary contralto voice; she is also remembered for her dignity and grace under pressure.
The collection comprises 100 albums and boxes. Volumes 1-49 contain photographs of Marian Anderson and her milieu, arranged chronologically (1898-1992); Volumes 50-55: photographs at Marianna Farm, arranged chronologically (1940-1970s); Boxes 56-79: duplicates of photographs in Volumes 1-55; Boxes 80-86: photographic scrapbooks; Boxes 87-94: oversize photographs, arranged chronologically (1922-1992); Box 95: duplicates of photographs in Boxes 87-94; Boxes 96-100: photographs of friends, colleagues, and admirers, arranged alphabetically by the last name of the subject.
Contains 2,531 scores ranging in date from ca. 1790 to 1895. The great majority of the items were published in the United States and approximately 1,150 items were produced by publishers in Philadelphia. The musical content of the collection consists largely of American popular songs and piano music, but also includes works by famous European composers published in the United States.
American sheet music of the nineteenth century provides a fascinating historical record of contemporary social concerns, issues, events, celebrities, and tastes. This record is further enhanced by the prevalent use of illustrations for title pages, including portraits, landscapes, and scenes of battles or local sites of interest. Many of the most significant American lithographic artists of the nineteenth century provided illustrations for sheet music and a substantial number of their works are included in this collection.
The Mary Binney Wheeler collection of photographic slides is one of the largest individual collections of its kind in the United States. Amassed over the course of fourteen trips to India and Sri Lanka, the collection provides us with over 9,000 images of an astounding diversity of people, places, and events from nearly every corner of the Indian Subcontinent.
Mary Binney Wheeler home pageInformation about current, past and future exhibitions at the University of Pennsylvania Library. There is also a gallery of Virtual exhibitions.
Penn Library Exhibits home page
The Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection