This digital exhibit by Writing MFA student Lissette Norman highlights the work of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, a corps of mostly Black paramedics who pioneered today's familiar emergency medical service (EMS) model in Pittsburgh's Hill District in the 1960s and 1970s.
Image Source: Peter Safar Papers, 1950-2003, UA.90.F102, Archives & Special Collections, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
A digital exhibit created by English PhD student Francis Quina that features two card games from the 19th century found in the University of Pittsburgh Library System Archives and Special Collections.
Image Source: Elizabeth Nesbitt Collection, Archives & Special Collections, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
A senior thesis project by Madeline Orton ’25 exploring the themes of death and dying in Victorian-era children's literature using materials from Pitt's Archives and Special Collections
Image Source: Elizabeth Nesbitt Collection, Archives & Special Collections, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
A digital database created to preserve the history of the development of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies program as well as related on and off- campus activism.
Image Source: Documenting Pitt, Archives & Special Collections, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
A timeline-based project by Linguistics PhD student Jack Rechsteiner that explores Pittsburgh's queer history through materials curated from the University Library System's Archives and Special Collections.
Image Source: Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival Records, 1980-1994, CTC.1994.02, Archives & Special Collections, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
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“Freedom House Ambulance,” Freedom House Ambulance Service, accessed September 17, 2025, https://freedomhouse.omeka.net/items/show/26.
“June 1920 Cover Image,” The Brownies' Book, accessed September 24, 2025, https://thebrowniesbook.omeka.net/items/show/59
Rainbow Alliance, “"Gay ex-ROTC fighting DOD policy",” Connecting Queerness in the Pittsburgh Archives, accessed September 17, 2025, https://connectingqueerness.omeka.net/items/show/267.
F. Warne, “Cock Robin's Death and Burial 1875,” Death, Dying, and Funerals in The Death of Cock Robin, accessed September 17, 2025, https://cockrobin.omeka.net/items/show/4.
“Garner at Piano,” Erroll Garner: Four Thematic Snapshots, accessed October 1, 2025, https://garnerarchiveexhibit.omeka.net/items/show/30.
Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez - Gerry Conway - Wally Wood, “Hercules Unbound No. 1: Hercules Unbound!,” Heroes of the Past in the Modern Day: Greco-Roman Heroes in 20th Century Comic Books, accessed September 17, 2025, https://grecoromanheroesincomicbooks.omeka.net/items/show/20.
Unknown, “Example of Carolingian Script on a Page of Music,” Honoring Mortality: An Overview of the Cologne Office of the Dead, accessed September 17, 2025, https://officeofthedead.omeka.net/items/show/5.
Portrait of Mary Cardwell Dawson. Box 13 / Folder 31, National Negro Opera Company Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Stephen Foster, early 1860s,” Stephen Foster, at Home in the 19th Century, accessed September 24, 2025, https://stephenfosterathome.omeka.net/items/show/36
Sandra Gould Ford, “Awareness and Appreciation,” Shooting Star Review: A Look into Black Aesthetic Pittsburgh, accessed September 24, 2025, https://shootingstarexhibit.omeka.net/items/show/108.
“Journal,” Shuffle and Deal: 19th Century Card Games in the Pitt ULS Archives and Special Collections, accessed September 17, 2025, https://shuffleanddeal.omeka.net/items/show/67.
Nancy R. Nageroni, “TRANS-ACTIONS,” Theorizing and Liberating in the pages of Transgender Community Magazines, accessed September 17, 2025, https://pitttapestry.omeka.net/items/show/12.
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Black Studies Department , “"Black Academic Excellence" Brochure,” The Blue, Gold and Black Digital Archive, accessed September 24, 2025, https://pittbgb.omeka.net/items/show/170.
Gemperlein, Joyce , “"Petition circulated for Women's Studies",” Pitt Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Digital Archive, accessed September 17, 2025, https://pittgsws.omeka.net/items/show/38.
Artaud Berquin, “The Children's Friend,” Round the Globe, accessed September 17, 2025, https://roundtheglobe.omeka.net/items/show/5.
“Intangibles,” Student Voices: Creating a Place of Belonging, accessed September 17, 2025, https://studentvoices.omeka.net/items/show/32.
A standardized back cover of the Newsline magazine, providing resources for people living with HIV/AIDS to connect with others. It provides connection for People With Aids (PWAs), family members, care providers, and other community organizing efforts that were crucial to the spread of information in the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Institute of Technology, “Pitt-Duquesne October 21, 1939 Program,” University of Pittsburgh Varsity Marching Band Archive Center, accessed September 17, 2025, https://pittvmbarchive.omeka.net/items/show/24.
Charles H. "Doc" Winner, “"Delighted!",” accessed September 17, 2025, https://votingispower.omeka.net/items/show/4.
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University of Pittsburgh, “Mary Roberts Rinehart portraits in nurse's uniform,” The Life and Works of Mary Roberts Rinehart, accessed September 17, 2025, https://mrrinehart.omeka.net/items/show/49.
Jules Verne, “From the Earth to the Moon,” Science Fiction Fall 2019, accessed September 24, 2025, https://sff19.omeka.net/items/show/22.
The Freedom House Ambulance Service, based in Pittsburgh’s Hill District from 1967 to 1975, was the first Emergency Medical Services system in the United States. It was staffed by fully trained paramedics, predominantly Black men and women, and offered advanced, life-saving care in the field.
This exhibit shines a light on trailblazers who revolutionized emergency medicine, but remain largely unknown. These unsung heroes not only saved lives in neglected communities but also built the blueprint for modern EMS nationally and internationally. Sharing their story online ensures it reaches new generations, challenging erasure and honoring their fight against systemic racism. It’s both an act of remembrance and a powerful reminder that real innovation often rises from those pushed to the margins.
The Blue, Gold and Black Digital Archive is a collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh Library System and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to collect and share materials that reflect the incredible variety of experiences and memories of Black students, faculty, and staff at Pitt.
In January 1920, the first issue of the children’s periodical The Brownies’ Book went into circulation. With a readership that would eventually reach 4,000 subscribers, The Brownies’ Book ushers in an era of Black children's literature. As a children’s periodical, The Brownies’ Book bursts open its contemporary archetype for Black childhood, and in doing so creates space for Black children to see and craft themselves outside of the dominant anti-Black images of Black childhood that dominated media in the early twentieth century. Understanding racial pride as critical to the “peculiar situation” surrounding black childhood, The Brownies’ Book centers the image and agency of Black childhood as both a tool of resistance and the hopeful spark of a new Black future. This digital exhibit is a curated look into the children’s periodical that highlights the narratives, hopes, and survival strategies of the past while making space for the new understandings of Black childhood in our present and future.
Pittsburgh has a rich queer history, reaching at least as far back as the early 1970s with the establishment of Pittsburgh Gay News in 1972 and Pittsburgh's first Pride Parade in 1973. Many materials about queerness in Pittsburgh from the 1970s and the years since have been collected for preservation by the University of Pittsburgh's Archives & Special Collections. However, the variety of formats and sources of these materials have resulted in them being dispersed throughout different locations in the Archives & Special Collections system. This project puts a curated selection of these queer materials into conversation with each other to illustrate connections that can be made (or re-established) across the holdings in Archives & Special Collections.
This project includes some items from the 1970s and the 21st century but primarily focuses on materials from the late 1980s and 1990s. This was motivated by Archives & Special Collections having a broader range of materials for the 1990s than earlier time periods and by the smaller digital presence of the 1990s materials in comparison to more contemporary materials. All the items curated for this project can be viewed individually and on a timeline by the month and year of the item's creation. Exhibits have also been created around common themes in the materials to highlight connections that can be found across the Archives & Special Collections holdings. These exhibits include timelines of the materials related to the theme, as well as additional contextual information and visualizations when possible.
A senior thesis project exploring the themes of death and dying in Victorian-era children's literature using materials from Pitt's Archives and Special Collections.
This digital exhibit, curated by graduate students and faculty of the University of Pittsburgh Jazz Studies program, is the result of four months of close engagement with materials from the Garner Archive. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this engagement took place entirely online, making use of digital scans made available through the University of Pittsburgh Library System. Much of the current digital collection consists of correspondence to and from Garner and his manager Martha Glaser (a powerful presence in the archive, who will also be featured in the pages that follow). Working with these materials, the curators were given a unique lens not only into Garner’s musical feats, but also his stances on social issues of the time, his relationships with both musical and non-musical peers, and the complex business operations that underlie the career of a musical icon.
This exhibit is not intended to be exhaustive, but offers a small window into the depths of the Garner collection. The pages provide—as the title suggests—a series of snapshots. We have divided them into four categories: Garner’s and Glaser’s efforts to fight racism; the complexities of tourism and publicity; his reputation among his musical peers; and his legacy after his passing in 1977. Click on the menu on the right to access any of these four pages. If any of the images featured are of particular interest, they can be clicked through for additional information, as well as links to their page within the Archive’s digital collection.
The ancient world of Greece and Rome is an undeniable part of our modern culture. The ancient past is still very much present today and one of the easiest places to see that is in the world of superheroes and comics. Throughout the 20th century, superheroes and comics exploded in popularity, becoming a cornerstone of the cultural zeitgeist. And it is in the 20th century comic books that the influence of the ancient world can be truly explored. From mythic influences on some of the most popular heroes to the direct use of creatures and figures from mythology, the world of Greco-Roman heroes is extremely prevalent and recognizable in these comics. But exploring why these choices, both in their outright inclusion but also in their changes, are made is the real question. How do comic creators choose to manipulate and alter the figures of antiquity to suit their own needs in storytelling today? Why include Greco-Roman heroes in 20th century comic books? That is the question that this site and its exhibits hope to answer.
A newer addition to the University of Pittsburgh's collection, The Cologne Office of the Dead is a medieval manuscript composed in 1487, serving as a reference material for religious figures who conducted funerals and last rites. Used by the church of St. Kunibert in Cologne, Germany until 1802, the manuscript beautifully showcases both the importance of religion to those living at the time, and the importance that death and mortality had in society.
By researching the way in which the book was created along with the extensive evidence of handling, my research aims to show how significant death was to those living in medieval Europe compared to how a majority of the population views it in modern day.
The exhibits shared on this site were entirely produced by the students of Dr. Rachel Maley's ENGLIT 730: Archival Research Methods course in Spring 2025. These student authors applied archival research methods to collect and publicize metadata and construct contextual narratives surrounding the life and works of Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958). They primarily engaged the materials in the Mary Roberts Rinehart Papers, 1831-1970 collection, which was donated to the University of Pittsburgh by Mary Roberts Rinehart's sons after her death in 1958.
Music Must Go On is an ongoing digital exhibition designed to commemorate the life and legacy of Black Pittsburgh Opera impresario Madame Mary Cardwell Dawson.
Through a myriad of mediums, this project explores the life and legacy of Madame Dawson, her peers, and her pupils within the context of opera, history, and research.
The University of Pittsburgh Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Archive is a digital database created to preserve the history of the development of the program as well as related on and off- campus activism.
Round the Globe: Travel Routes of Children’s Literature is a collaborative project investigating how the history of children’s literature was shaped by transnational trade, colonization, evangelism, and struggles for independence. Our name, Round the Globe, is a reference to the slew of mid-to-late nineteenth-century book series with names signaling global aspirations—including global content, global knowledge, global coverage, and/or global circulation. The name was specifically used for a series by British publisher Frederick Warne, better known for publishing Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit books, but other similar series include Popular Histories of Foreign Lands, the Travel-Adventure Series, the Traveler Tales Series, and the Wonderful Globe Series. The name also references rhetoric used by missionary organizations such as the Religious Tract Society, whose annual reports were titled with phrases like Round the World with the Printed Page, For All Nations and Peoples, and For All the World. Additionally, the term was also used by children's periodicals such as Boys' Own Paper to indicate a global readership and community of childhood, which was at odds with the harsh realities of colonial rule.
Our use of this name is meant in some sense to be descriptive, as we are tracing the global spread of children’s literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, but it is also intended to update what is meant by global knowledge and to call attention to the often quite narrow understanding of the globe used in these series. Many early global publishing initiatives were driven by what Audra Diptee and David V. Trotman have called “the battle over childhood and youth” “at the heart of the colonial enterprise.” Our project, conversely, reckons with the actual global impacts of children’s literature, contextualizing its history within a framework recognizing diverse local responses and innovations. We aim to create an international community of scholars and to engage in public outreach that gives people around the world an opportunity to contribute.
The exhibits shared on this site were entirely produced by the students of Dr. FitzPatrick's 2019 Science Fiction (SF) course. These student authors activated archival methods and methodologies to collect and publicize metadata and construct contextual narratives that make evident thematic, historic, and cultural connections between archival objects in the University of Pittsburgh's Special Collections. In the resulting exhibits, you will find surveys about apocalypse and technological progress, studies of social history expressed through a speculative lens, considerations of visual storytelling techniques and megatextual tropes, explorations of SF's inclusivity, and connections to real-world science. To learn more about the exhibits, we encourage you to Browse Exhibits through the link on the side menu.
Shuffle and Deal is a digital exhibit that features two card games from the 19th century found in the University of Pittsburgh Library System Archives and Special Collections.
These card games, one from early 19th century France, and the other from late 19th century America, are presented as more than just playful material, but as historical artifacts. As such, these games allow us to see how issues of race, gender, class, and colonialism were not only represented, but gamified during this period. These card games also exemplify the rise of visual culture during the 19th century which was enabled by advances in mass printing during that time.
This website examines the work and life of nineteenth-century songwriter Stephen Collins Foster through the lens of “home”—both the concept and the physical structures prevalent during the early to mid-Victorian era. It draws upon letters, sheet music, audio recordings, Stephen’s personal manuscript book and account ledger, and other artifacts and related materials housed in the Foster Hall Collection, Center for American Music, University of Pittsburgh Library System.
The six sections of the site are arranged chronologically, following Stephen from his birthplace in just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1826, to Bellevue Hospital in New York City where he died on January 13, 1864. During his 37 years he would live in countless houses, boardinghouses, rooms, hotels, and hovels. His music ranges from classical compositions and piano songs played and sung in the parlors of the new commercially-driven American middle class, to minstrel tunes and “Plantation Melodies” performed by troupes of white men in blackface. Some of the central themes of his songs are home, enslavement, war, mourning, and death—all of which reflect an artist “at home” creatively, socially, politically, and economically in the ages of Jacksonian Democracy, Manifest Destiny, and Civil War.
The Shooting Star Review is a black literary magazine which ran from 1987 to 1995, producing 31 dynamic issues. Founded and developed by artist, author, and educator Sandra Gould Ford, The Shooting Star Review proclaims in its integral 1987 issue, Identities, “Shooting Star Review promises a sparkle in your eye, riches in your soul and glide in your stride . . .There is no beauty in art until it is shared. No magic until it is enjoyed. No meaning until it opens up our feelings for ourselves. And for our friends” (Ford). The Shooting Star Review largely follows the idea “for us, by us,” creating a space for blackness to thrive, stretch, create, react, hope, and ponder. International in its scope, The Shooting Star Review is a black literary magazine that seeks to connect all parts of the African Diaspora. Within this digital exhibit alone, we have works depicting black life from Jamaica to Egypt to, of course, Pittsburgh.
During Spring Term 2022, a team of ULS librarians asked a group of Pitt undergraduate and graduate students to take and share photographs of public spaces in which they felt comfortable, welcomed, and that they belonged. These photographs became a base for discussions with the students to uncover characteristics of spaces in which those from diverse backgrounds would feel welcome and that they belonged. The findings from these conversations informed an architecture student who developed ideas for space design to promote a sense of belonging. In this exhibit you will see a selection of photographs taken by project participants, grouped based on common themes uncovered in our discussions, and design solutions developed based on the findings.
At the start of the 1990's, the Transgender community faced a major wake-up call. The Americans with Disabilities Act had just passed, grouping Transvestites, Homosexuals, and Pedophiles together. On top of that, the new decade granted the community the inspiration to create change. Through a community magazine called Tapestry they sought to unite a previously divided community and politically organize to enshrine rights they declared to be theirs. The Transgender community also created their own definitions of their identities. Previously using words doctors gave them, Transvestite and Trans-sexual, the Transgender community used the platform they made to create their own words that described them. Thirty years prior, the Transgender community in America started to form with the emergence of a similar magazine called Transvestia. Much like Tapestry, the writers of Transvestia used their platform to develop and understand their identity.
This exhibit celebrates the efforts of these communities to organize themselves. Seperated into two sections, Theorizing and Liberating, this exhibit highlights the growing self-determination the Transgender community made for itself.
The University of Pittsburgh Libraries System (ULS), in collaboration with The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Office of Undergraduate Research is delighted to present an Omeka exhibit created by the 2021 student recipients of the Archival Scholar Research Awards (ASRA) program. To familiarize themselves with the corpus of research materials, the students closely examined an item/object from their ASRA primary sources and share their observations through their exhibit page.
A collection of Pitt News articles, yearbook photos, documents, and group information preserving the history of the Pitt Marching Band.
Welcome to the site for the University of Pittsburgh Library System's exhibit Voting Is Power: A Commemoration of Voting Rights History and the Continued Struggle. This digital exhibit highlights ULS archival materials and resources about the history of voting rights.
Browse our exhibit collections to learn more about voting rights in the United States. Witness the scenes of Shirley Chisholm's presidential rally at the Carnegie Music Hall. Read the newspaper articles of the women's suffrage movement that spread through the streets of Pittsburgh. Explore the history of the movements that fought for the ratification of the 19th amendment and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Register to vote and learn more about opportunities for civic engagement.
