Triptych, a cutting-edge online library, now gives viewers instant access to special collections from Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore Colleges as well as the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore.
Thanks to the staff at Haverford's Magill Library, you can now view the Bi-College News photograph collection; browse the Cope-Evans Family Papers, which includes the correspondence of several prominent Philadelphia Quaker families; read the diary maintained by Quaker philosopher Rufus Jones during his 1926 trip to East Asia; and skim four different books about Haverford's history (A History of Haverford College for the First Sixty Years of its Existence, The Story of a Small College, Haverford College: A History and Interpretation, and The Spirit and the Intellect)—all without leaving your computer.
These items and more are available online at Triptych's website, a digital library that builds on the cooperative model of TRIPOD, the searchable catalog for the tri-college libraries. First made possible seven years ago by grants from Morris Evans ‘43 and the SNAVE Foundation, Triptych offers online access to the historical collections of Haverford's and Bryn Mawr's libraries, the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, and the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore.
The software behind Triptych is called CONTENTdm, which, according to Digital Collections Librarian David Conners, is the software of choice for libraries seeking to digitize their collections.“It's good at creating compound objects. For example, if you have a multi-page letter, this software bundles it together into one clickable item instead of individual online files for each scanned page.”
The materials on Triptych are diverse, says College Archivist Diana Franzusoff Peterson.“There's no mandate as to what we include. Often, they're items that are close to the heart of the College.” Sometimes, professors will ask for something specific from the College's collections to be put online for class purposes.
It's not only documents that are being digitized: A related site, Tripix, contains images of art and archaeology scanned from books, slides and Haverford's Photography Collection, all available for educational use. There are also 342 photographs, paintings, and art print portfolios from the College's 4,000-plus fine arts holdings online. And, Haverford is one of four test sites for Variations, a digital music library that allows users to stream sound recordings and view and print scores.
Currently, the library staff is busy scanning the last of the 3,000-item Cope-Evans papers and collaborating with Swarthmore's Friends Library to digitize Quaker broadsides, announcements and flyers ranging from the colonial era to the present day. They're also working on streaming visual and audio files from the College's resources, such as an ongoing oral history project featuring interviews with Haverford alumni.“Many of our oral histories are on cassette tape and reel-to-reel tape,” explains Head of Special Collections John Anderies,“and these formats are not going to last. We digitize them to preserve the content.”
In addition to preservation, accessibility is a big reason why digital libraries are becoming more common, says Anderies:“Not everyone is able to come through these doors. We want to extend the reach of our resources to the greatest possible number of people.”
“It aids in the discovery of our items,” says Conners.“Many of our online holdings are discoverable through a Google search, and we get more requests from people to see our items if they've found them online first.”
