Penn in Hand: Selected Manuscripts is the University of Pennsylvania’s collection of more than 1,400 online facsimiles of rare manuscripts from the 9th to the 19th century held in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. A two-year grant funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities has allowed Penn to finish digitizing manuscripts produced prior to 1601; a second grant was secured in March to digitize manuscripts from 1601 to 1800. The collection also includes more than 100 facsimiles of the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, a collection of late medieval and early modern manuscripts donated in April by 1953 College graduate and Wharton MBA recipient Lawrence Schoenberg.

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The Lincoln Highway Digital Image Collection is part of the University of Michigan Library’s Transportation History Collection and consists of the archive of the original Lincoln Highway Association (1910–1927). The association was made up of representatives from the automobile, tire, and cement industries, with the goal of planning, funding, constructing, and promoting the first transcontinental highway in North America. The route, consisting of both existing and newly built roads following the most direct route possible, ran from New York to San Francisco, covering approximately 3,400 miles. The digital collection consists of approximately 3,000 images, including views of construction underway, towns and cities, markers, bridges, cars, camp sites, scenic views, and snapshots of association directors and field secretaries traveling the route. The photographs were digitized from 1999 to 2007.

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The Pasadena Digital History Collaboration is a consortium of cultural institutions in Pasadena, California. Its unites efforts to bring Pasadena history to life by preserving, documenting, and providing access to digitized historical materials through a single, open-access point for the public. The Pasadena Public Library, Pasadena Museum of History, Pasadena City College, and Huntington Library so far have placed more than 4,000 photographs and documents in the collection. n addition to a searchable database, the site features special collections on topics such as the Tournament of Roses and Busch Gardens, the sprawling former winter estate of brewing magnate Adolphus Busch. The group also uses Flickr to maintain a gallery of mystery photos, inviting the public to help date and identify them.

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The State Historical Society of North Dakota, as part of the Digital Horizons consortium, has included items from its photograph, film, publications, and map collections that document the history of both the state of North Dakota and the Northern Great Plains region.

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Wish You Were Here: Saskatchewan Postcard Collections highlights more than 4,500 postcards found in 11 archives throughout the province of Saskatchewan. Hosted by the Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists, the images found on the site are eclectic. No attempt was made to curate the cards or select thematically specific images. The postcards came to be in archival collections in a variety of ways. Some, sent to individuals in Saskatchewan, are part of larger archival groups; some were collected by individuals; others were collected by institutions for the images or text they presented. The only unifying theme of the exhibit is that all of the postcards now form part of Saskatchewan’s rich and diverse archival heritage.

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The Pennell Photography Collection at the University of Kansas Spencer Research Library in Lawrence consists of more than 30,000 glass plate negatives that represent the life work of Joseph J. Pennell, a successful commercial studio photographer who worked in Junction City, Kansas, from the early 1890s to the early 1920s. It offers a comprehensive view of life in a moderate-sized Midwestern army-post town on the Great Plains at the turn of the last century. The university acquired the negatives, along with 10 ledgers of business records, in 1950. Pennell’s novelist son, Joseph Stanley Pennell, was persuaded to donate them by KU faculty member Robert Taft, who selected 4,000 images that he considered significant, printed them, and prepared a traveling exhibition, which generated a great deal of interest. In 1983, with funding provided by NEH, the entire collection was surveyed, and additional images were printed and cataloged along with the images selected by Taft. It is this subset that is now viewable online.

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The Centennial of the Overseas Railway, an extension of the Florida East Coast Railway that ran to Key West, is celebrated in this Flickr digital collection posted by the Monroe County (Fla.) Public Library. The railroad opened January 22, 1912, and operated until the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. Built by oil and railroad magnate Henry Flagler, the railway cost more than $50 million and required many engineering innovations and vast amounts of labor. In 1912, a proud Flagler rode the first train into Key West aboard his private railcar, marking the completion of the railroad’s overseas connection to Key West and the linkage by railway of the entire east coast of Florida. It was widely known as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

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The Miniature Book Collection in the University of North Texas Digital Library includes a selection of contemporary and historical miniature books selected from the larger collection in the UNT Libraries Rare Book Room. In some cases, only the covers have been digitized. The collection also contains issues of the Miniature Book News and the Miniature Book Society Newsletter. Miniature books are defined as those books under 4″ (3″ in some places) in height.

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The University of Arkansas Library in Fayetteville launched a digital collection August 9 documenting the life and work of Brooks Hays (1898–1981), a leading Democratic congressman from Arkansas’s Fifth District from 1942 to 1959. The collection, titled “Principles and Politics: Documenting the Career of Congressman Brooks Hays,” includes more than 170 items, including articles, campaign materials, cartoons and drawings, correspondence, diaries, photos, poems, prayers, and speeches. Special Collections Department Head Tom W. Dillard notes that Hays worked to mediate the escalating civil rights conflicts during the 1950s and refused to join Gov. Orval Faubus in his efforts to prevent the integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

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Indiana Memory is a collaborative effort to provide access to the wealth of primary sources in Indiana libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions. It is a gateway to Indiana’s history and culture found in digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, newspapers, maps, and other media. As a portal to the collections, Indiana Memory assists individuals to locate materials relevant to their interests and to better appreciate the connections between those materials. This project is made possible through grant funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to the Indiana State Library. In July 2011, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $293,157 grant to the Indiana State Library to digitize the state’s historically significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. The digitized papers will become available through Indiana Memory.

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