1987

January

The Penn State Project Staff continued inventorying and cataloging work in 10 northeast Pennsylvania counties.

See 1987 (January through December) Monthly Reports generated by the Penn State Project staff for details on their cataloging accomplishments, statistics and discoveries.

30-counties would be completed by December. Counties completed by the Penn State Project staff in 1987 were: Wyoming, Luzerne, Pike, Wayne, Lackawanna, Carbon, Monroe, Northampton, Susquehanna

University of Pittsburgh Project staff continued to input data compiled by the Penn State Project staff for northeastern Pennsylvania, and to provide CONSER authentication for all sites.

The Pennsylvania Newspaper Project Microfilming phase began. It was anticipated that the microfilming phase would continue through 1989. The proposed annual microfilming expenditure to microfilm 3M pages was estimated at:

$150,000 for 1987 ; $200,000 for 1988; $250,000 for 1989

MICOR, the Micrographics Corporation, of Bensalem, Pennsylvania was selected to serve as the Project microfilm vendor for 1987.

February

Bill Hamill, Historical Society of Pennsylvania Project coordinator noted in his February Progress Report:

“Entering the Society’s cavernous newspaper vaults, a visitor is likely to feel that he has come upon a forgotten crypt whose quieted lives yearn to be unstilled. Unstilled they have become as the stories of our past days are awakened from the pulp and rag bodies of the Ledger, the Packet, and the Press. But another life has also been unstilled. The ghost of Albert Edmunds, (1875-1941) the Society’s late venerable cataloger, has been said to walk the building’s halls and rooms. We are compelled to report, however, that old Albert is no mournful spirit – just a friendly prankster who has overseen the cataloging of nearly 800 titles from a collection he helped to build.”

March

Juniata College donated $2,000 to the Project on behalf of the Friends of the Juniata College Library. These funds would be counted toward the NEH required funding match, and would be used to microfilm newspapers held at the Juniata College, Huntingdon County.

April

The Pennsylvania Newspaper Project Microfilming phase began on April 13when MICOR Micrographics Corporation made its first pick-up of newspapers for microfilming – the Daily Review from the Daily Review Office in Towanda, Bradford County.

State Library Project staff completed their in-house work, cataloging more than 2,500 Pennsylvania and out-of-state titles. Field work was set to begin at the Historical and Museum Commission and at Shippensburg University.

May

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Project staff completed their in-house cataloging and had cataloged the collections at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the American Philosophical Society. Work was nearing completion at the Balch Institute.

The University of Pittsburgh Project staff completed cataloging at all Pittsburgh repositories. Work was also completed in repositories in Washington, (PA), and in Indiana, Westmoreland, Armstrong and Beaver counties.

August

State Library Project staff Susan Bryson and Karen Brosius resigned to accept other non-Project positions. Susan accepted a position at the Penn State Mont Alto Campus Library, and Karen accepted a position in the State Library’s Interlibrary Loan Section.

University of Pittsburgh Project cataloger Faye Liebowitz resigned to accept a new position as Head of Technical Services at the Beaver County Library System, PA.

September

Penn State Project field librarian Becky Wilson resigned to accept the position as Assistant Director of the Susquehanna University Library, Selinsgrove, Snyder County, PA.

October

Nancy Greene’s article “Library Automation in Transit was published in Small Computers in Libraries. The article described the use of portable microcomputer technology in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Project. Microcomputers were used to search the OCLC database via a dial-up service , build local databases of titles found and institutions visited, and to “take advantage” of an electronic mail network in the state.

December

Due to difficulties to gain approval to fill Project staff vacancies at the State Library, the State Library contracted with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) Project to complete the cataloging field work of central Pennsylvania initially assigned to the State Library Project site. Counties re-assigned to the Historical Society were: Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lehigh and Schuylkill. The contract with HSP was completed in December with HSP Project staff to begin work in this new area in 1988.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Project staff completed the cataloging of the Society’s holdings.

MATCO/ROMCOR of Camp Hill, PA was selected the Project’s new microfilming vendor for 1988.

Private gifts (in amounts of $100, $300) and a pledge of $10,000 payable in early 1988 and $10,000 payable in early 1989 were received as matching funds for the Project from the McLean Contributionship. A request for $86,350 of state funding (required to receive NEH’s maximum funds for 1988) was included in the State Library’s 1988-1989 budget request.

Cumulative statistics for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Project, through December 1987:

Total counties completed: 39

New cataloging records created: 3,889

New Local Data Holdings records created: 19,146

These figures represented workforms which had final CONSER authentication at the University of Pittsburgh.

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