SOURCE

~ Student Organization for Unique and Rare Collections Everywhere ~

Site of the month: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s Digital Library

Thomas Edison National Historic Park – 2/11/12

Hi, everyone,

SOURCE is excited to announce our first trip of the semester to the Thomas Edison National Historic Park, in West Orange, NJ.

The Edison site is home to a rich collection of over 5 million documents, including 3,500 laboratory notebooks; business and personal correspondence; blueprints; 60,000 photographs; 48,000 sound recordings on cylinders and discs; family papers; and library materials that include Edison’s personal collection of technical and scientific books. A particularly fascinating aspect of these collections is that they are located at the same site at which they were originally created or used, and thus serve as an invaluable resource for the interpretation and conservation of the site, the buildings and the 400,000 museum artifacts it contains.

For our trip, we have arranged to meet with the Edison site archival staff, who will show us highlights from their collections, as well as give us a personalized tour of the main laboratory building from an archivists perspective.

Park admission is only $7 (including Glenmont, the Edison family’s Victorian home) and is about a 45-minute drive from New Brunswick.

We are planning this trip for Saturday, February 11, 2011. Space is limited, so please click on the Survey Monkey link to RSVP.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JL8RHP2

Thanks,
Ken Cleary
SOURCE Co-President

P.S. Here are links to additional information about the Thomas Edison National Historic Park:

• http://www.nps.gov/edis/index.htm
• http://www.nps.gov/edis/historyculture/recorded-sound-archive.htm
• http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/09/thomas_edisons_invention_facto.html