New Web site indexes Pitt’s historical texts and photos

A black-and-white photograph of Thomas Shaw Arbuthnot, once the dean of the faculty of the… A black-and-white photograph of Thomas Shaw Arbuthnot, once the dean of the faculty of the Department of Medicine at Pitt, appears on a page of a new Pitt Web site. He sits tall and proud, letting a slight smirk appear on his face. His hair parted and smoothed perfectly to the right, Arbuthnot’s double-breasted coat resembles that of clothing from the early 1900s.

Maybe that’s because the picture was taken in 1911. And now, information and pictures like these are available to the public.

Pitt’s University Library System launched a new Web site called “Documenting Pitt: Historical Publications of the University of Pittsburgh” at http://digital .library.pitt.edu//documentingpitt Monday, Oct. 9.

The site contains 70,000 pages of text, photographs and old yearbooks that date back to the 1800s, according to a press release.

Ed Galloway of Pitt’s digital imaging department was responsible for digitizing and indexing all of the material. The chosen information for the site was scanned from November 2005 through February 2006. Galloway and his digital imaging team then hired students to help process the images and spent the summer developing the Web site.

“This type of material we selected is highly sought after by various parties on campus,” Galloway said, naming Hillman Library, Alumni Office, Office of Institutional Advancement and Provost Office as a few. “There are many different audiences that we were trying to reach, especially for the yearbooks.”

Before the Web site, it was virtually impossible to physically find people from Pitt in the past.

“It seems that not a day goes by in the archives without someone requesting a yearbook page or material about the University,” University archivist Marianne Kasica said in the press release.

The Web site features “The Owl” yearbooks from 1907 to 1980. “The Owl” was the official yearbook of the Western University of Pennsylvania and later Pitt, according to the Web site, and the name was later changed to “PantherPrints” in 1981.

Also on the site are past issues of the University Courant, a lesser-known publication that contains poems and essays written by students, faculty and administrators, according to the press release.

Financially supported by the Office of the Provost, the site has images and documents searchable by word.

“This was just a logical thing for us to look at,” said Rush Miller, director of the University Library System. “We knew other universities scanned yearbooks, but no one had done this comprehensive site. We decided it would be a good use of resources.”