Library Company Shows Off its German-American Folk Art

Dieses Neue Gesang buch…..Watercolor and ink, Probably Bedminster Township, Bucks County, PA, ca. 1830.

As part of Philadelphia’s three-month long celebration Framing Fraktur, the Library Company has a small selection of our printed and manuscript fraktur on exhibition through May 22, 2015. From birth certificates to bookplates, these gems of folk art illuminate the German-American experience in early America. Other holdings from our German-Americana collections are showcased. Pennsylvania German liturgical bindings are on display to tell the story of Chief of Conservation Jennifer Rosner’s effort to create an historic model of these unique bindings.

Framing Fraktur, a city-wide initiative, will feature exhibitions at area institutions, workshops, and lectures. "Fraktur and the Everyday Lives of Germans in Pennsylvania and the Atlantic World, 1683-1850," a symposium sponsored by the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, will be held March 5-7, 2015. For a complete calendar of Framing Fraktur events, please visit: www.freelibrary.org/framingfraktur. 

Digital Humanities Outreach: Turning Library Records into Data Workshop

One of the hallmarks of the Digital Humanities is collaborative education and outreach. The Library Company continues to work with digital managers and support staff among area colleges, cultural organizations and museums. This past December LCP’s Information Technology manager Nicole Scalessa collaborated with Laurie Allen, Coordinator for Digital Scholarship and Services at Haverford College, to organize a program entitled “Turning Library Records into Data: A Conversation & Workshop.” Nicole and Laurie called upon their colleagues Doreva Belfiore, Digital Projects Librarian, Temple University; Nabil Kashyap, Librarian for Digital Initiatives and Scholarship, Swarthmore College; and Delphine Khanna, Head of Digital Library Initiatives, Temple University, in planning the workshop at the Cassatt House.

This half-day event invited librarians and archivists to discuss ways to expose their online collections to interpretation and analysis by digital humanities scholars, students, and local hackers, and to make those collections easily mappable.  The workshop began with a session featuring examples of discussion of data-sharing methods at various librarie and was followed by group discussion about planning and implementation strategies. “What is data?,” "What can we usefully export from our various systems?,” and “Once I’ve opened my data, where should I put it?” were just a few of the questions presenters addressed. Another session focused on using geospatial data to make collection records accessible to a wide array of online users.

The event was attended by nearly 30 participants and marked the first time that a Library Company event was available online via live stream. Comments from this event may be viewed on Twitter at #glamdataphilly, and portions of the broadcast will be published on our YouTube channel in the spring.

Open Saturdays

To celebrate the popularity of our current exhibition “Genius of Freedom:  Northern Black Activism and Uplift after the Civil War” and to make it possible for more people to visit our gallery, the Library Company will be open from 10 am to 3 pm on the last Saturday of the month from February to June. Include the Library Company in your weekend plans on February 28, March 28, April 25, May 30, and June 27 and visit our newest exhibition focused on the strategies of African Americans in the North to claim their proper place in the post-slavery nation following the Civil War.