D-Scribe Digital Publishing is an open access electronic publishing program of the University Library System (ULS) of the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

. It comprises over 100 thematic collections that together contain over 100,000 digital objects. This content, most of which is available through

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

, includes both digitized versions of materials from the collections of the University of Pittsburgh and other local institutions as well as original 'born-electronic' content actively contributed by scholars worldwide. D-Scribe includes such items as photographs, maps, books, journal articles, dissertations, government documents, and technical reports, along with over 745 previously out-of-print titles published by the

University of Pittsburgh Press The University of Pittsburgh Press is a scholarly publishing house and a major American university press, part of the University of Pittsburgh. The university and the press are located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The press ...

. The digital publishing efforts of the University Library System began in 1998 and have won praise for their innovation from the leadership at the

Association of Research Libraries The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 127 research libraries at comprehensive, research institutions in Canada and the United States. ARL member libraries make up a large portion of the academic and resea ...

and peer institutions.

Major digitized collections

The University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh has created various digital collections through its D-Scribe Digital Publishing program and has made them available to the public via the Internet. The following is a selection of the more prominent or larger collections available online.

19th-century schoolbooks

A full-text digitized presentation of over 140 historic books in the 16,000 volume Neitz Old Textbook Collection. The textbooks date from the 19th century and are fully searchable.

Archive of European Integration

A digitized repository and archive of material dealing with

European integration European integration is the process of industrial, economic integration, economic, political, legal, social integration, social, and cultural Regional integration, integration of states wholly or partially in Europe or nearby. European integrat ...

that focuses on the normalization of relations of Eastern and Western Europe following the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

and the integration movements in West Europe that resulted in the

European Community The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisbo ...

. Nearly 30 universities throughout Europe and America contribute content to the AEI. The AEI collects both independently produced research materials and official European Community/

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

documents. Many of the digitized documents in the AEI are drawn from the University Library System's collection of EU documents received in 2007 when the library of the Delegation of the European Commission to the US in Washington, D.C. was donated to the University of Pittsburgh.

Audubon's Birds of America

The University's complete double elephant folio set of

John James Audubon John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin; April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was an American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictoria ...

's ''

The Birds of America ''The Birds of America'' is a book by naturalist and painter John James Audubon, containing illustrations of a wide variety of birds of the United States. It was first published as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838, in Edinburgh and ...

'', one of only 120 complete sets of all 435 plates in existence, was preserved and restored over a five-month process in 2000. In 2007, along with the five volume set of Audubon's ''Ornithological Biography,'' the plates were digitized at high resolution and made available in one complete online collection.

Darlington Digital Library

The Darlington Digital Library contains digitized materials from the Darlington Memorial Library. The Library is a major collection related to American history, particularly colonial American history in Western Pennsylvania. Digitized items included vintage atlases, books, broadsides, images, manuscripts, and maps.

Dick Thornburgh Papers

Former Pennsylvania governor and

United States Attorney General The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the p ...

Dick Thornburgh donated his personal papers to the University of Pittsburgh in 1998. Portions of the collection are digitized and arranged in twenty-one chronological sections, representing Thornburgh's life and career, each with introductory information about the point in time, the position held, and items of importance.

George Washington Manuscripts

A digitized collection of broadsides manuscripts, maps, images, and personal communications that depict

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

's time in Western Pennsylvania at various points in his career.

Historic Pittsburgh Collection

This digital collection includes digitized historical resources on the history of

Western Pennsylvania Western Pennsylvania is a region in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, covering the western third of the state. Pittsburgh is the region's principal city, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic ...

including texts, videos, maps, images, census records, and archival finding aids. Included are over 25,000 images from multiple photographic collections that originated from a digitization project funded by the

Institute of Museum and Library Services The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an independent agency of the United States federal government established in 1996. It is the main source of federal support for libraries and museums within the United States, having the mis ...

and completed in 2004. The presentation represents a collaboration between Pittsburgh-area libraries, museums, and universities and includes historic material derived from those held by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh; the Library & Archives at the

Heinz History Center The Senator John Heinz History Center, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is the largest history museum in the Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States. Named after U.S. Senator H. John Heinz III (1938–1991) from Pennsy ...

;

Chatham University Chatham University is a private university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally founded as a women's college, it began enrolling men in undergraduate programs in 2015. It enrolls about 2,110 students, including 1,002 undergraduate students an ...

Archives; Oakmont Carnegie Library; Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation; and

Point Park University Point Park University is a private university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Grea ...

Archives.

University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions

The University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions is a collaboration between the

and the University Library System that has digitized over 745 monographs in order make them freely available to the public via the internet. Mostly out-of-print titles, the collection includes fully searchable titles from the Pitt Latin American Series; Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies; and Composition, Literacy, and Culture.

Stephen Foster Sketchbook

A digitized and searchable presentation of

Stephen Foster Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826January 13, 1864), known also as "the father of American music", was an American composer known primarily for his parlour music, parlour and Minstrel show, minstrel music during the Romantic music, Romantic ...

's sketchbook that contains 113 leaves with hand-written drafts for 64 different songs, including some unpublished ones, as well as other notations and doodles. The full sketchbook was digitized in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

in 2005, with the original stored in a vault at the University of Pittsburgh.

Other digitized collections

D-Scribe includes many other collections of materials and photographs. Major themes include Asian studies, labor and socialist movement, philosophy, atlases, the

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...

Collection of Photographs, and historic Pittsburgh photo archives. Also included are photo archives from various conferences and industries.

Asian studies collections

:The ULS has digitized a variety of titles and artwork held in the university's East Asian Library. These include the Barry Rosensteel Japanese Print Collection;

Tsukioka Kōgyo Tsukioka may refer to: People: *Tsukioka Settei (1710–1787), Japanese ukiyo-e artist *Kōgyo Tsukioka (1869–1927), Japanese artist of the Meiji period *Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (1839–1892), Japanese artist *Yumeji Tsukioka (1922–2017), Japanese ...

, The Art of Noh, 1869-1927; and Modern China Studies.

''Free at Last?'' exhibit

:''Free at Last?'' is an exhibit based on a collection of

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Allegheny County () is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in Southwestern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,250,578, making it the state's second-most populous county, following Philadelphia Co ...

slavery

manumission Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that t ...

s discovered in 2007 by staff in the Allegheny County Recorder of Deeds Office that document the widespread existence of slavery in Western Pennsylvania up until the US Civil War period. Staged at the

in Pittsburgh, the exhibit focused on the original documentation coupled with interpretative panels and other artifacts to tell the story of African American slaves in Western Pennsylvania between 1792-1857. Shortly after the close of the exhibit in April 2009, the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh built a virtual exhibit with particular attention focused on the manumission documents.

Industry photo archives

:D-Scribe includes photographic archives from various Western Pennsylvania companies including

American Steel and Wire Company American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

CONSOL Energy Consol Energy Inc. is an American energy company with interests in coal headquartered in the suburb of Cecil Township, in the Southpointe complex, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2017, Consol formed two separate entities: CNX Resour ...

Mining,

H. J. Heinz Company The H. J. Heinz Company is an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 1869. Heinz manufactures thousands of food products in plants on six contin ...

, Lyon Shorb & Company, Mesta Machine Company, Otto's Suburban Dairy, Pittsburgh Railways Company, Rust Engineering Company, and Trimble Company.

Labor and socialist collections

:Digitized repositories of Pittsburgh labor and socialist movements include the A.E. Forbes Communist Collection, American Left Ephemera Collection, the Cartoons of Fred Wright, the '' UE News'' Photograph Collection, the

Union Switch & Signal Union Switch & Signal (commonly referred to as US&S) was an American company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which focused on railway signaling equipment, systems and services. The company was acquired by Ansaldo STS (from 2015, Hitachi Rail ...

Strike Photograph Collection, Stalinka: the Digital Library of Staliniana, as well as the Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania Labor Legacy project.

Lillian Friedberg Postcard Collection

:A digitized collection of postcards dealing with the

1933 World's Fair A Century of Progress International Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in the city of Chicago, Illinois, United States, from 1933 to 1934. The fair, registered under the Bureau International des Expositi ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

and Nazi leadership propaganda, and French cartoons parodying Nazi leadership.

Philosophy collections

:The ULS has digitized portions of the collected paper of prominent philosophers, including

Frank P. Ramsey Frank Plumpton Ramsey (; 22 February 1903 – 19 January 1930) was a British philosopher, mathematician, and economist who made major contributions to all three fields before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenste ...

and

Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States". Life and career His father ...

Electronic archives and repositories

The D-Scribe Publishing Program has also developed several electronic archives and repositories. These repositories have been developed using Open Access principles, meaning that scholarly content is online, freely available, and immediately accessible to a global audience. Archive content includes both peer-reviewed and non-refereed content; unpublished and published articles (preprints or postprints); conference proceedings; other grey literature, such as white papers, policy papers, and technical reports; multimedia content including audio, video, and images; and primary research data. These online archives serve many needs, such as storing the scholarly works of university authors; preserving information from specific research disciplines; and disseminating new scholarly work quickly, without a lengthy publication process. The content for these archives is drawn from a variety of sources including digitization of ULS print collections and direct author contributions from the worldwide research community.

Metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

for each item published in the repository is searchable through search tools such as Google and Yahoo. Based on

EPrints EPrints is a free and open-source software package for building open access repositories that are compliant with the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). It shares many of the features commonly seen in document ...

, free open source software developed at the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

, these subject-based repositories offer simple Web-based submission interfaces for authors and a variety of tools for readers including

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

feeds, rich citation export options, and sharing on major social networking sites. Electronic archives created by the D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program include: *

Aphasiology Aphasiology is the study of language impairment usually resulting from brain damage, due to neurovascular accident—hemorrhage, stroke—or associated with a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, including different types of dementia. These spec ...

Archive *

Archive of European Integration The Archive of European Integration (AEI) is an electronic repository and archive for research materials on the topic of European integration and unification. The AEI contains two types of documents: *European Community publications intended for ...

D-Scholarship@Pitt, the Institutional Repository of the University of Pittsburgh
including Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) * Industry Studies Working Papers * Minority Health and Health Equity Archive * PhilSci-Archive, a

preprint In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset versio ...

repository for the field of

Philosophy of Science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

Electronic journal publishing program

D-Scribe also contains 40 scholarly journals published by the University Library System (ULS), University of Pittsburgh. Through this program, the ULS works with partners around the world to publish

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

, international

Open Access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

electronic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...

s. Services offered include server and software hosting; graphic design services; consultation in editorial workflow management and best practices for electronic publishing; and

ISSN An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSNs ...

and DOI registration. These services are offered free of charge in an effort to incentivize academic journal editors to publish their research results through free and

for researchers worldwide. The ULS also publishes several subscription-based journals under a delayed open access model. The publishing platform is based on

Open Journal Systems Open Journal Systems, also known as OJS, is a free software for the management of peer-reviewed academic journals, created by the Public Knowledge Project, and released under the GNU General Public License. History Open Journal Systems (OJS ...

, free open source software developed by the

Public Knowledge Project The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit research initiative that is focused on the importance of making the results of publicly funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making th ...

(PKP). As of 2016, 40 journals are published in this program, including: *''Bolivian Studies Journal'' *''CINEJ Cinema Journal'' *''Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture'' *''EMAJ Emerging Markets Journal'' *''Etudes Ricoeuriennes/ Ricoeur Studies (ERRS)'' *''Excellence in Higher Education'' *''Health, Culture and Society'' *''Hungarian Cultural Studies'' *''International Journal of

Telerehabilitation Telerehabilitation (or e-rehabilitation is the delivery of rehabilitation services over telecommunication networks and the internet. Telerehabilitation allows patients to interact with providers remotely and can be used both to assess patients ...

'' *''

Japanese Language and Literature ''Japanese Language and Literature'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal published by The Association of Teachers of Japanese. It was established in 1966 as the ''Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese'', obtaining its curren ...

'' *''Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy'' *'' Journal of Law and Commerce'' *''

Journal of World-Systems Research The ''Journal of World-Systems Research'' (''JWSR'') is a biannual, open access, peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of world-systems analysis, established in 1995 by founding editor Christopher Chase-Dunn at the Institute for World-Sy ...

'' *''

Ledger A ledger is a book or collection of accounts in which account transactions are recorded. Each account has an opening or carry-forward balance, and would record each transaction as either a debit or credit in separate columns, and the ending or ...

,'' a journal on

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...

and

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

technology, "the first peer-reviewed journal on Bitcoin" *''

Names A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. The entity identified by a name is called its referent. A persona ...

'' *'' Pittsburgh Journal of Technology Law & Policy'' *'' Pittsburgh Tax Review'' *''Pennsylvania Libraries: Research and Practice'' from the

Pennsylvania Library Association The Pennsylvania Library Association (PaLA) is the professional association for librarians in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It represents about 2,000 members affiliated with public, academic, special, and school libraries throughout the state, ...

*''

Radical Teacher ''Radical Teacher'' is a socialist, feminist, and anti-racist peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to the theory and practice of education. The journal examines the root causes of inequality and promotes progressive social change in the field ...

'' *''Revista Iberoamericana'', a journal of the literature, literary theory, and literary criticism in

Latin American Spanish The different varieties of the Spanish language spoken in the Americas are distinct from each other as well as from those varieties spoken in the Iberian peninsula, collectively known as Peninsular Spanish and Spanish spoken elsewhere, such as in ...

and

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

*''The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies'' *''

University of Pittsburgh Law Review The ''University of Pittsburgh Law Review'' is a journal of legal scholarship edited by an independent student group at University of Pittsburgh School of Law and published by the D-Scribe Digital Publishing program at the University Library Sys ...

''.

References

External links

University of Pittsburgh University Library System D-Scribe Digital CollectionHistoric Pittsburgh digital collection at the University of Pittsburgh
{{Authority control American digital libraries Mass digitization Open-access archives University and college academic libraries in the United States University of Pittsburgh Open access publishers Academic journal online publishing platforms Full-text scholarly online databases Library publishing