Past Projects:

Digital Music Library:
The Digital Music Library was the Penn State University Libraries’ term for a pilot project to develop and implement an electronic course reserve service for audio. The Digital Resources Center was the test bed for the development of this service, in collaboration with Digital Library Technologies. The service is now called Audio Electronic Reserves.

The English Emblem Book Project:
An emblem book contains images and text. An emblem creates dialogue or tension between image and word. Frequently allegorical in theme, emblems were designed to engage, challenge, and instruct the audience. The English Emblem Book Project of the Penn State University Libraries' Electronic Text Center makes this older form of text, the emblem book, available within a newer form of text, the World Wide Web.

Iconologia or Moral Emblems, Caesar Ripa:
This work is owing to the noble idea's and fancy of Caesar Ripa, an Italian, who applied himself with indefatigable study to make a collection of the figures of the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and to produce others of his own and other celebrated authors in this science. These images are the representatives of our notions; they properly belong to painters, who by colours and shadowing, have invented the admirable secret to give body to our thoughts, thereby to render them visible.

John Updike's Buchanan Dying:
This site has been designed to be instructive, entertaining, and useful for students, Updike enthusiasts, and the curious. The site has two major goals: to stimulate thinking about how an idea for a novel or a play becomes a novel or play or some final published form by showing and explaining aspects of this process, to encourage visitors to look at the Updike materials in Special Collections and to become curious about other Special Collections holdings.

Times of Sorrow and Hope:
The Times of Sorrow and Hope website features a complete catalog of Pennsylvania photographs from the FSA-OWI collection. The catalog represents photographs taken by close to forty photographers in nearly two hundred Pennsylvania towns, villages, cities, and landmarks. This convenient resource is the result of a highly productive collaboration between the Pennsylvania State University Libraries and the Pennsylvania State University Press. Together, the website and book offer a unique, comprehensive visual and written record of Pennsylvania history as the state struggled through one of its darkest periods and confronted new economic, political, and social challenges.

Wright American Fiction:
Lyle H. Wright, a librarian at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, created a bibliography of American fiction from the years 1851-1875, published as American Fiction 1851-1875: A Contribution Toward a Bibliography. He listed a total of 2,923 titles in adult fiction, including "novels, novelettes, romances, short stories, tall tales, tract-like tales, allegories, and fictitious biographies and travels, in prose" (from the introduction), and inventoried 18 American libraries for holdings. This compilation is part of his three-volume set listing American fiction from 1774 through 1900, and is still considered the most comprehensive bibliography of American adult fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries. Wright American Fiction is working to digitize the works listed in Lyle's bibliography. There are currently 2,887 volumes available for browsing.