Western Penman Journal Collection Now Online

The University is pleased to announce that our substantial collection of Western Penman and American Penman journals has been digitized and is now publicly available online as a part of the Library’s digital collections. The Western Penman can be accessed here and The American Penman here.

Contained within the Library’s extensive Zaner-Bloser Penmanship Collection, the journal is one among many penmanship periodicals published during what is known as the “Golden Age” of penmanship, extending several decades before and after the year 1900. Austin Norman Palmer began The Western Penman in 1884. A contemporary and competitor of Charles Paxton Zaner (who would begin publishing his own journal, The Business Educator, eleven years later), Palmer created a simplified method of manuscript writing designed for speed and relying on muscle memory and whole-arm movement. Palmer’s technique contrasted with the more ornate Spencerian script that was the standard of the time. The insistence on speed, evidenced even in Palmer’s habit of closing letters with “Rapidly yours,” aligned perfectly with the growing American obsession with the automobile and his ideas were soon taught in schools across the country. In 1900, Palmer began publishing separate student and professional editions of The Western Penman. In 1906, the publication was renamed The American Penman and ran until 1938, resulting in a total of fifty-five volumes of issues.

The Library’s collection encompasses the entire span of the Penman’s life cycle, although some volumes and issues are missing. While a substantial amount of the Library’s penmanship journals, consisting mostly of the Penman’s Art Journal and the Zaner-Bloser publications, were digitized in 2010 by the Internet Archive as a part of the Lyrasis Mass Digitization Collaborative, the Western Penman and American Penman journals remained available almost exclusively in their print editions. In 2017, twenty-two bound volumes were digitized by Backstage Library Works. Our digital collection now contains 519 issues, with a total of 17,119 page images. The master TIFF image files, which are stored in our digital preservation repository, add up to 652 GB.

We extend our warmest thanks to all of those involved in the process of making these journals digitally available! They are sure to offer great value, both historically and artistically, to our Library’s users.

Below are examples representing various elements of the journal: examples of penmanship completed by students at a business school in Michigan, a page of exercises written by penman R. H. Robbins, and an excerpt from a detailed lesson by Palmer concerning his Muscular Movement technique. Palmer wrote that he considered his readers to be an “immense writing class” led by his teachings.

 

University of Scranton Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Scholarly Projects Collection

This year at commencement, the University of Scranton awarded diplomas to the first three graduates of our new Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program, which opened in Fall 2015. The DNP program requires students to complete an evidence-based scholarly project. … Continue reading






Scranton Family Papers Collection

Following our recent Scranton Family Papers Scanathon, held in partnership with the Lackawanna Historical Society, the Scranton Public Library, the State Library of Pennsylvania, and our own University of Scranton Department of History and Royals Historical Society, the Weinberg Memorial … Continue reading






Through the Eyes of P. W. Costello: Early Scranton Theatre

Note: This article is the first in a series highlighting the P. W. Costello and Family Art Collection, an online repository for digitized images of original and published artwork by master penman P. W. Costello (1866-1935) and his descendants. This … Continue reading






12,876 University of Scranton Records Now Available in the Digital Public Library of America

Last week at DPLAFest in Washington, DC, executive director Dan Cohen announced that the Digital Public Library of America had grown in its third year to include more than 13 million records. We’re proud to announce that 12,876 of those … Continue reading






Celebrate Scranton’s Charter Day with Coloring Pages!

This Saturday is Charter Day, Scranton’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of its incorporation as a city. There will be lots of events going on all day, but here’s another festive option for creative Scrantonians: Charter Day Coloring Pages! These … Continue reading






Color Our Collections: Penmanship

The library, archives, and museum world is abuzz this week with #ColorOurCollections, a weeklong cultural heritage coloring fest dreamed up by the New York Academy of Medicine and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. As coloring fans ourselves, we couldn’t help but … Continue reading






Color Our Collections: University of Scranton Archives

The library, archives, and museum world is abuzz this week with #ColorOurCollections, a weeklong cultural heritage coloring fest dreamed up by the New York Academy of Medicine and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. As coloring fans ourselves, we couldn’t help but … Continue reading






Scranton Family Papers Scanathon: Success!

As part of the City of Scranton’s yearlong 150th Anniversary celebration, the Weinberg Memorial Library hosted our very first Scanathon this weekend. In collaboration with the University’s Department of History and the student-run Royals Historical Society, along with community partners … Continue reading
http://sites.scranton.edu/library/category/digital-collections-2/
sites.scranton.edu
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-51
93212
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:IVLCQFITV6UDCPC4C3XYA4N7FJNLGD37
<urn:uuid:aa58976c-59a9-4d09-8134-d61623308950>
2017-12-18T18:41:59Z
134.198.4.23
text/html
sha1:IXSVT2FGARLVRVET57OEGTIGOFG5YQ2N
<urn:uuid:40e3a7ae-05d6-4477-8dfc-90ec4c497412>
http://sites.scranton.edu/library/category/digital-collections-2/
length
response
<urn:uuid:38b8020a-cd32-464a-89c5-0996b273c12e>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-30-53-223.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-51
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for December 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf