This joint project by the University of Pittsburgh and the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society provides access to digitized books, maps, and archival collections documenting the history of the city of Pittsburgh, its residents, and the surrounding Allegheny County. The Full-Text Collection contains text and illustrations from more than 60 books, including multi-volume histories of Pittsburgh and special reports, such as urban planner and park designer Frederick Law Olmsted's "Pittsburgh main thoroughfares and the down town district; improvements necessary to meet the city's present and future needs" (1910). Also included are guides or finding aids to 64 archival collections, for example, Guide to the Records of Allegheny County Allied Boards of Trade, 1922-1940, and plat maps. In addition, there is detailed background information on Historic Pittsburgh, such as tools and techniques used for full-text production, and vendors and software used for data creation and processing. This background information should prove extremely useful for archivists and librarians undertaking similar projects, or anyone curious about how the digital presentation of historical materials is accomplished.
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