Something Old, Something New
In this post, France-Merrick Director of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library Catherine Mayfield provides an update on happenings behind the scenes and gives an introduction to our new digital resources.
Hello everyone, it’s been some time, and if you take a look around the new website here you’ll see just what’s been keeping us occupied over these last months. The Maryland Historical Society has a new look, a new name, and a new us: the Maryland Center for History and Culture. The changes have been a long time coming, and as we began preparing for the transition to our new website, the staff in the H. Furlong Baldwin Library was thrilled at the opportunity to increase discovery and findability in our collections. That goal drove our work on the development of two new platforms: the MCHC’s Finding Aids Database and the Digital Collections.
If you were in the library, you’d see even more change these days. We’re increasing collection stewardship through improved fire suppression, which is why we can’t welcome you back just yet. Though we can’t say hello in person until our reopening on October 7th, we’re excited for you to get to know the new MCHC online.
Through the Finding Aids Database, you can search across manuscript, photograph, and other special collections to find background information and inventories for nearly 1,000 separate collections. The Digital Collections, meanwhile, serve as a growing sampling of digitized materials from both our library and museum collections. While the Finding Aids Database provides context to help you determine whether collections are relevant to your research, the Digital Collections platform is the place to seek out and view individual resources. Browse, search, and come back (we hope frequently) to see the newest additions. We’ll be continuing to grow the Digital Collections with more of the amazing content from the H. Furlong Baldwin Library – manuscripts, maps, oral histories, and so much more.
Despite the many changes here, you’ll also find aspects of the site that will feel familiar. Our Library Catalog has gotten a facelift, but the search functionality remains the same. We’ll be resuming our posting here to the underbelly, too, highlighting stories and photographs from the Collecting in Quarantine initiative, sharing about new acquisitions and newly processed collections, and featuring the types of posts that are at the heart of the underbelly: those highlighting items and stories from the collections of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library.
We’re busy getting ready in the library for your safe return, and in the meantime, we hope you’ll take a spin around the new site. We’re also here for your research questions. You can always reach out to us at specialcollections@mdhistory.org.
France-Merrick Director of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library Catherine Mayfield has been a fixture in libraries for as long as she can remember. She first got a taste of library work as a middle schooler, when she doled out prizes for summer reading at her local library. She’s since grown her experience to include work in government archives, the public library, and special collections.