Connect to Penn State Digital Books

The Penn State University Press and the University Libraries are actively collaborating and sharing expertise to create digital books that are easily accessible and in some cases available to order in print.

Have you ever wondered what happens when a print run is sold out and a desirable book goes out of print? Access to such titles for many years was generally only available by contacting out-of-print booksellers or using interlibrary loan or microfilm copies. Advances in scanning, web, and searching technologies allow the Press and the Libraries to bring significant works out of obscurity.

The Beaver Collection

People with an interest in older materials about the Commonwealth benefit from access to the Pennsylvania History Collection, familiarly known as the "Beaver Collection," with its origins in the personal library of a prominent Centre County native son. Items began to be acquired by the library, beginning in the early 1900s for what was described as an “Alcove for Pennsylvania History.”

Formerly available only in print or on microfilm, you will now find the Beaver Collection titles available for reading on the Web in page-image format. Browse the "PA's Past: Digital Bookshelf" at http://apps.libraries.psu.edu/digitalbookshelf/, where you can search by topic, author, and title. Intriguing titles include:

Autobiography of Miss Flora Lowry: a true history, with many amusing incidents, travels from Ireland to America, and through different parts of the West (published in Tyrone, PA in 1885)
Gettysburg: a history of the Gettysburg Battle-Field Memorial Association, with an Account of the Battle… (1897)
War of the Gauges, or, Rail-Roading at Erie: comprising an official and authentic version of the rail road trouble at Erie and Harbor Creek (1854)

General James Addams Beaver was a local lawyer, governor of the Commonwealth from 1887 to 1890, a long-time member of the Board of Trustees of the Pennsylvania State College, and interim President of the College early in the twentieth century. An endowment from donor funding supplements the original collection and makes it possible to add titles of lasting value in the study of Pennsylvania history. General Beaver's interests were wide-ranging and reflected in his library and the subsequent additions. The volumes now in the collection based on Beaver's foresight contribute to the Libraries' distinctive resources in Pennsylvania history, biography, early almanacs, geography, genealogy, military science, and culture, and are listed individually in the Libraries online catalog, The CAT.

Print On Demand Books a Growing Trend
"Print-on-Demand" (POD) books are one of the advances in book distribution that consumers will be seeing more of in future. The concept of POD is an uncomplicated one: Rather than printing many copies of a book and warehousing them until they are sold, books are stored digitally and then printed and bound as orders are received. Publishers find this a more economical way to provide a wide range of titles that meet individual tastes and research needs, even though the audience for a particular book or subject may be more limited.

Another Press/Libraries collaboration is Metalmark Books, a joint imprint of the Press and the Libraries. Books in this series are being published simultaneously in print-on-demand and digital formats, with the digital versions available on the web and the print version available by clicking on a link from the Press Web page.

The first title in the Metalmark imprint, Pennsylvania Mountain Stories, is from the Beaver Collection, too, and is an interesting book of historical legends of Pennsylvania published nearly 100 years ago. Others currently available from the Metalmark imprint include some of even more historical significance such as the Journal of William Penn While Visiting Holland and Germany, in 1677. View Penn's diary and letters online. To get a copy of this previously out-of-print title through the print-on-demand service, go to the Press's Web site at http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02752-5.html, and click on "Purchase Paperback." Penn State Press titles are also available from Amazon. A benefit of Penn State Alumni Association membership is a 20% discount on books if you order via the toll free number: 1-800-326-9180.

Press/Libraries Collaboration
At Penn State, you'll find a creative group of colleagues at the Press and the Libraries who are recognized nationally for exploring a new collaborative approach to meeting the challenges of twenty-first century scholarly publishing. Both units report to Nancy Eaton, Dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications, and have a "crossover" organization in the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing.

Find out more about the Penn State University Press and its activities at the Web site: http://www.psupress.psu.edu/aboutPSP/mission.html, and about some of the Libraries’ other digital resources and projects at: https://secureapps.libraries.psu.edu/digital/.