Center for Digital Scholarship

The Center for Digital Scholarship promotes the use of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum collections through digitization, digital humanities initiatives, and the development of innovative library software.

The Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) develops large-scale, public-facing, digital projects designed for providing universal and open access to the holdings of the APS Library & Museum. It is staffed by experienced professionals that bring with them an expert knowledge of current standards for digitization, digital project development, and digital preservation.

We explore what digital scholarship means in a small, independent research library. We partner with scholars, institutions, and students from across the country.

Fellows, Interns, and Partners

Fellows

Joe Makuc, Temple University
Martin L. Levitt Fellow, 2020
Project: Historical Meteorological Records
Link: https://www.amphilsoc.org/museum/exhibitions/historic-meteorological-records-aps/have-you-ever-seen-rain-1791-droughts-damage


Molly Nebiolo, Northeastern University
Digital Humanities Fellow, 2020
Project: "Visualizing Early Colonial Philadelphia"
Link: https://mollynebiolo.com/digital-humanities/visualizing-colonial-philadelphia/

Experiential Fellow, 2020
Project: Historical Meteorological Records
Link: https://www.amphilsoc.org/museum/exhibitions/historic-meteorological-records-aps/locating-transatlantic-seed-trade-james


Bethany Farrell, Temple University
Digital Franklin Research Fellow, 2019-2020


Jessica Markey Locklear, Temple University
Martin L. Levitt Fellow, 2019
Project: Digitizing and Contextualizing Frank Speck's Lantern Slides Collection
Link: https://www.amphilsoc.org/museum/exhibitions/frank-specks-lantern-slides


Nicôle Meehan, University of St. Andrews
Digital Humanities Fellow, 2019
Project: "Investigating Indentured Servitude: Visualizing Experiences Of Colonial America"
Link: https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/indenturedata/


Serenity Sutherland, SUNY Oswego
Digital Humanities Fellow, 2018
Project: “Visualizing 19th and 20th Century Women in Science”


Loren Michael Mortimer, University of California-Davis
Digital Humanities Fellow, 2018
Project: "'To Improve their Condition:' A Quaker's Journey through the Early American Borderlands, 1803"


Will Fenton, Fordham University
Elizabeth R. Moran Fellow, 2017-2018
Project: "Americanization: Then and Now"
Link: https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/labs/americanization


Madalina Veres, University of Pittsburgh
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital History, 2018
Project: "In the Heart of Philadelphia: The Story of Library Hall"
Link: https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/labs/Library-Hall
Project: "The American Philosophical Society: Celebrating 275 Years of Promoting Useful Knowledge"
Link: https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/labs/timeline-275


Cynthia Heider, Temple University
Martin L. Levitt Fellow, 2017
Project: "Transforming Benjamin Franklin's 1748-1752 Post Office Book into Open Data"


Steve Marti, University of Delaware
Digital Humanities Fellow, 2017
Project: “Visualizing Admission: The Admission Book of Eastern State as Dataset”


Annette Joseph-Gabriel, University of Arizona
Digital Humanities Fellow, 2017
Project: “Mapping Marronage: Visualizing Transatlantic Networks of Freedom”


A.J. Blandford, Rutgers University.
Digital Humanities Fellow, 2016
Project: “Labor and the Visualization of Knowledge in American Geological Surveys, 17801860”


Sarah Ketchley, University of Washington
Digital Humanities Fellow, 2016
Project: “Visualizing ‘Golden Age’ Nile Travel: The Emma B. Andrews Diary Project”

 

Interns

Molly Shannon, Washington College
Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience Summer Intern, 2019
Project: Digitizing and Transcribing Structured Data from Benjamin Franklin's Postal Ledgers


Ben Weinstein, Washington College
Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience Summer Intern, 2017
Project: Digitizing and Data Stewardship of Indentured Records
Link: http://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/record-indentures-individuals-bound-out-apprentices-servants-etc


Chelsea Reed, Temple University
Digital Library Intern, 20162017
Project: Digitizing the William Parker Foulke Papers


John Giganti, Rutgers University
Digital Library Intern, 2016
Project: Digitizing the William Parker Foulke Papers


Robert Teel, Washington College
C. V. Starr Intern, 2015
Project: “Too Near Where History Is Being Made: Henry Howard Houston II In a Time of War”
Link: http://diglib.amphilsoc.org/labs/houston/


Grace DiAgostino, Temple University
Digital Library Intern, 2015
Project: Digitizing the Eastern State Penitentiary Collection
Link: http://www.amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.365.P381p-ead.xml


Alina Josan, Drexel University
Digital Library Intern, 20142015
Project: “Joining the Fray: Mapping a World of Paine”
Link: https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/labs/join-the-fray/


Stephanie Lampkin, University of Delaware
Digital Library Intern, 2014
Project: “Colonization in the Foulke Papers“
Link: https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/gallery-colonization-foulke

 

Partners

Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Library Company of Philadelphia
Project: "Revolutionary City: A Portal to the Nation's Founding"
Read the project's press release and follow the project's progress with Project Data Manager Sabrina Bocanegra's #RevolutionaryPHL blog updates.


Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University and The Center for Digital Editing, University of Virginia
Project: Historical Meteorological Records Project


PACSCL (Pennsylvania Area Consortium of Special Collections)
Project: “For the Health of the New Nation: Philadelphia as the Center of American Medical Education, 1746-1868”
Contribute material from the APS Library for this two-year CLIR-funded project to expose the history of medical education in Philadelphia through the end of the Civil War.

Project: “In Her Own Right: Women Asserting Their Civil Rights, 1820-1920”
Technical Advisory Committee


John Van Horne, Director Emeritus of the Library Company of Philadelphia
Project: “Reconstructing Philadelphia’s Earliest Museums, 1774-1827”
Technical consultants and hosts for a project that will document and reconstruct the contents of the Philadelphia museums of Pierre Eugène Du Simitière and Charles Willson Peale


DPLA (Digital Public Library of America) and PA Digital
Active contribution of digitized material and metadata to this open discovery resource.


University of Illinois Archives
Project: “The Cybernetics Thought Collective: A History of Science and Technology Portal Project”


The Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia
Project: Institutional records digitization project


Haverford College Libraries
Project: Quaker Networks Explorer
Extend and generalize the open data platform developed at Haverford by including Quaker-related content from the APS Library.


Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site
Project: Prison-Related Open Data Share