Collection
The IHS Collections and the William Henry Smith Memorial Library both preserve and make accessible one of the largest archival repositories of material on the history of Indiana and the Old Northwest, including 1.6 million photographs (500 visual collections), 45,000 cataloged printed items (books, pamphlets, etc.), 14,000 pieces of sheet music, 5,000 processed manuscript collections, 3,300 artifacts, 1,100 cataloged maps, 575 broadsides and 60 paintings. More than 37,000 digital images are currently available through the IHS Web site.
Also among the items held by the Society is a 130-year-old Bible used in 2008 to swear in Mayor Greg Ballard of Indianapolis. One of the most significant items in the IHS collections is the original glass-plate negative of a Abraham Lincoln photograph taken by Alexander Gardner just weeks before the Gettysburg address (this image was used as the model for the creation of the Abraham Lincoln National Memorial in Washington D.C.).
Subject strengths of the IHS collections (especially as they relate to Indiana and the Old Northwest) include Architecture, Agriculture, American Civil War, Business, Communities, Education, Ethnically and Racially Identified Groups, Families, Government, Journalism and Communications, Medicine, Military Affairs, Notable Hoosiers, Old Northwest Territory, Organized Labor, Politics, The Professions, Religion, Social Services, Transportation (Including Railroad and Interurban History) and Women.
Read more about this topic: Indiana Historical Society
Famous quotes containing the word collection:
“You know, many people believe that we archaeologists are just a collection of old fogies digging around in the ruins after old dried up skulls and bones.”
—Griffin Jay, and Harold Young. Stephen Banning (Dick Foran)
“It’s rather grisly, isnt it, how soon a living man becomes nothing more than a collection of stocks and bonds and debts and real estate?”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)