Explore the Digital Collections of the APS
The APS Digital Library provides access to a wide variety of digitized items from the holdings of the American Philosophical Society. Browse documents in the Digital Library on the Collections page, or find specific items using the search bar to the upper right.
Explore the full breadth of APS holdings, both digitized and undigitized, with additional context by using our Collections Search and viewing manuscript finding aids.
Colonel Richard Gimbel Collection of Thomas Paine Papers
Thomas Paine's reasoned and persuasive writings not only influenced nascent American republican ideology, but profoundly affected the perception of government in England and France as well. This collection is a heterogeneous mix of items connected only by the fact that they were all collected by Gimbel (1898-1970) and that most were written by, to, or about Paine.
To commemorate his 287th birthday, we are featuring the extensive collection of political cartoons relating to Painite radicalism and the conservative response.
Natural History at the APS
By virtue of the fact that its early membership was strongly committed to scientific discovery and understanding of the natural world, the APS features significant holdings depicting natural history. Throughout the next year, and in anticipation of the APS Museum’s upcoming exhibition Sketching Splendor: Natural History in America, 1750-1850, we will be featuring highlights from the Library & Museum's natural history collections.
Want to learn more about mammoths? Click below.
The Frank Speck Lantern Slide Collection
The Frank G. Speck Papers at the American Philosophical Society contain the Library's largest and most wide-ranging photograph collection relating to Indigenous people. Speck used the medium of lantern slides to document American Indian life in the first half of the 20th century. The collection consist of images taken from 1904 through the early 1940s, mainly of Indigenous communities in eastern and southeastern North America.
Learn more about the context and implications of this complex collection in this gallery by Martin L. Levitt Fellow Jessica Locklear.
Click below to see the images.