New Service Links Library Patrons to Pa. Collections

The University Library System (ULS) has launched a new online service that allows researchers, students, genealogists, and the general public to search digital collections created by Pennsylvania libraries, museums, colleges and universities, and historical societies.

The goal of the Pennsylvania Digital Library (PADL) is to serve as a gateway to documents, photos, e-journals, electronic dissertations, conference proceedings—anything available online in a digital format—created by Pennsylvania libraries and cultural heritage institutions.

The site can be found online at http://padl.pitt.edu.

“Our digital library staff has done a wonderful job of creating a tool that will allow all citizens of Pennsylvania to quickly and easily access book, historical photos, and other material,” says Rush Miller, ULS director and Hillman University Librarian.

PADL harvests the descriptive information about the material held in the numerous digital collections scattered across the Commonwealth. It indexes this descriptive information so it can be searched, free of charge. Any Pennsylvania organization seeking to register its digital collections with PADL can visit the Web site for instructions.

Currently, PADL holds materials from Bryn Mawr College, Drexel University, Haverford College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Penn State University, the State Library of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, Thomas Jefferson University, Villanova University, and Pitt.

Ed Galloway, coordinator of the ULS Digital Research Library, said PADL has the potential “to become an important resource for scholars, students, and the general public to easily determine what digital collections exist in Pennsylvania that might meet their research needs.”

PADL was created by the ULS in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Advisory Committee on Collaborative Digitization and is part of the Pitt’s extensive D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program.

D-Scribe can be found online at www.library.pitt.edu/articles/digpubtype/.