MDCH Blog

MDCH has just added a new digital collection. World War II in Maryland is selection of items depicting what life was like for residents throughout the state during the war years. Included are pamphlets, programs, advertisements, ration books, and other artifacts.

As the result of our ongoing partnership with Western Maryland Regional Library, MDCH has just added a digital collection of pages from Boyd's Business Directory of Maryland, published in 1875. The collection includes occupation and business listings for the entire state, except for Baltimore City. Separate entries for Cumberland and Hagerstown are also included. 

Thanks again to WHILBR, Western Maryland's Historical Library, for enabling us to harvest metadata from their existing digital collections and make it available to users of the MDCH website.

MDCH is now posting selected images on the Enoch Pratt Free Library's Flickr photostream, starting with 15 images from our Works Progress Administration of Maryland collection. The goal is to increase access to images in MDCH's digital collections, allow people to view them in a different context, and provide additional opportunities for user input and dialogue. So take a look, and feel free to add tags, comments, or select the photos as your favorites! 

The Building and Exhibitions Lantern Slides collection from the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) has just been added to the MDCH website. The collection currently includes 31 images documenting the exhibitions and architecture of The Baltimore Museum of Art from its opening in 1923 through the 1950’s. The images in the digital collection represent a small selection of the nearly 1,000 glass lantern slides in the museum's archives, a substantial portion of which were digitized as the result of a grant received by the BMA in 2009. We plan to continue our partnership with the BMA, and look forward to making more of the lantern slide images accessible online in the future. 

The Harford County Living Treasures oral history collection has recently been added to the MDCH website. It is the first MDCH collection comprised of audio/video content, providing access to over 40 interviews with longtime Harford County residents. The collection is the product of an ongoing partnership with Harford County Public Library.  

In keeping with the fact that 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth, 49 additional items have been added to the Edgar Allan Poe collection, such as letters, poems, and portraits. Transcripts are included with the items.

MDCH has posted a new collection to our website. The Works Progress Administration of Maryland collection includes over 100 photographs dating from the mid-1930's. Photos in the collection show WPA workers engaged in wide variety of activities throughout the state, including: constructing roads, buildings, and bridges; repairing schools; improving public utilities; sewing; and distributing school lunches.