Allow me to welcome you to the Annihilation of Nature by Spirit...

 
We could get a lot of traction out of the gestures toward contemporaneity and immateriality contained in MAD’s press release — such as, Why are the two terms necessarily related? Under what conditions does it make sense to conceptualize the contemporary as ephemeral, or rather, to think of our present as any more or less fleeting than prior presents? Is the nose the last stop on the immaterial train? IS there really anyone working in smell? Or is the Village Voice right to ridicule this reactionary woolly-headed Hegelian outburst? Why not just burn incense to ward off evil spirits, instead of pressing art into service to the Geist? Finally, when the American Craft Museum gives up on the intellectual tradition of the handmade, doesn’t that leave the field open to all manner of backwoods, back-to-the-land survivalists? Associate the immaterial with the cosmopolitan present and the material is by default part of the feudal past. Thus do Sarah Palin and Etsy become bedfellows, sweeping all before them… — but we’re going to bracket these concerns, and just talk about conflict-of-interest.

Renauld Dutreil sits on MAD’s board. Dutreil is the current head of LVMH. LVMH makes Dior and Givenchy. qed.

A simple rent-a-museum procedure, akin to Dakis and his New Museum.

Anne of Carversville has obliquely pointed out how the present conflict of interest might operate in future. A Swedish parfumier is pimping a line conceptualized around ink — letters, drawing, painting, in her words:

M/MINK is created to first smell like ink, but then to become the spirit and soul of ink, so that the fragrance is writing messages under your skin. It’s very conceptual, we know, but understanding this process may become easier with the first-ever museum exhibition on perfume [...]

 
Easier indeed. Perhaps I’m hyperventilating here. Contemporary art and perfume require a conceptual leap of faith. Once this has been achieved, success comes through canny marketing. The mere idea that a museum exhibition of anything could improve the bottom line of anything else testifies to the desperate lengths that the privileged class will go to to obtain returns. Perhaps the sorta-conceptual belongs with the cannily-marketed, and all we can do is deal. As the old head says in Tout Va Bien, “C’est degolas, mais on s’habitue.” It’s disgusting, but you get used to it.
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Pontormo doesn't give a fuck if you don't get him.

First of all, I’d love it if anyone other than Russian oligarchs selling Viagra and Rolexes commented on my posts. So there’s that. Even the motley crew of learneds commenting on Fendrich — happily reprising the nonsense they got from Art Appreciation for Non-Majors 25 years ago — is better than nothing.

Part of the problem is no doubt the nonsense “subjective appreciation” thing that Fendrich labors under, viz.:

Unlike words, or mathematical formulae, or scientific studies, most art automatically prompts one of three reactions: I like it, I don’t like it, or I’m indifferent to it.

Really? I would have thought that being assessed by international markets, an academic-industrial complex, a museum industry and a non-institutional cohort — assessing people by reputation, tribal allegiance, and *shock* quality! — would give some credibility to art as a *sigh* discursive practice.

On the other hand, if one blogs about experiences limited to one’s studio — such as the awesomeness of Williamsburg Cinnabar Green, or how badass it is that Philip Guston almost uses rabattement in The Desert — it pretty much shuts down the ability of any one but you to comment. Especially when your target audience is aspiring adjunct professors of English. Talk about art & media, art & capital, art & information, etc., and maybe we’ll find some points of entry.

For me anyway, the point of the practice is kind of beyond making things intelligible/accessible. Nobody’s work should flay itself for all comers. Did we give up the right to opacity with our union dues?

For all this hot air, forgive me dear Reader. The Chronicle‘s real problem is technical; I was going to post all this in the Chronicle comments section, but it was buggy…
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Indexes and narrative fun for the obsessed researcher in Philadelphia place name origins

Imagined locus | Intended community | Columbus resources | Philadelphia resources | Internet resources | Institutions | LCSH | Print version (pdf)

Imagined locus

South Philadelphia Memory, through physical and digital collections, as well as through user-contributed digital content, tells the story of the people who have made up the neighborhood from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the present. We support research in local history and genealogy, as well as scholarship in American domesticity and the immigrant experience. Our guide to place names will introduce the interested reader to the sussurrating text on the city’s surface, will provide invaluable benchmarks for dedicated genealogists and historians, and will serve to settle bets.

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Intended community

The likeliest users of the pathfinder are dedicated amateur genealogists and library staff identifying images and composing descriptions of digital objects. For these groups, the pathfinder includes the drier resources, the paragon of which is Jefferson Moak’s Philadelphia Street Name Changes. Onomastics – as the great George R. Stewart reminds us – is a discipline of what youthful gamers would call Easter Eggs: unanticipated, though much-rumored surprises locked inside a quotidian matrix, unearthed with only a little help. Patrons acting with their own edification in mind – only slightly more studious than the average fan of Haunted New Jersey – are the deeper target of the pathfinder. Narrative and slightly more garish resources have been pulled in for their benefit. As the city drew its names from the regional cultures, resources describing onomastics in the mid-atlantic region have also been included.

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Resources held in Columbus libraries

Thompson Library, The Ohio State University

Alotta, R. I. (1992). Signposts and settlers: The history of place names in the middle Atlantic states. Chicago: Bonus Books.
F106 .A463 1992
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

The prolific Robert Alotta graces us with a narrative account of place names both extraordinary and common in Signposts and Settlers. No city exists in a vacuum, and just as Penn’s naming system for the city seeded the nation with Highs, Broads and Chestnuts, the city absorbed names from the region.

Paxton, J. A. (1810). The stranger’s guide: An alphabetical list of all the wards, streets, roads, lanes, alleys, avenues, courts, wharves, ship yards, public buildings, &c. in the city and suburbs of Philadelphia, with references for finding their situations on an alphabetical plan. Philadelphia: To be had of E. Parker.[microopaque]
MIC Remote Depository AC1 .E22 Microprint no.23586-no.23705(microprint)
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

A typical early index of the 19th century city, with significant advantages over Moak, namely, cross-references locating place names. An intellectual forebear to University of Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods, and to PAB. Carrier is difficult to navigate.

Also available in OSU’s Special Collections & Rare Books Stacks: F158.44 .P37

Also available online in Early American Imprints, Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819) [New Canaan, CT] : Readex, [2004], via NewsBank: subscription required [$$$].

Columbus Metropolitan Library, History & Genealogy Dept.

Moak, Jefferson M. (2001). Philadelphia street name changes. Chestnut Hill Almanac Genealogical Series, pubn. 2. Rev. ed. Philadelphia, PA. The Almanac.
R 929.309748 P544, M687p, 2001
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

NARA Archivist Jefferson Moak’s print-on-demand Excel file of 4300 name changes over the course of roughly 150 years is dry, but rich with data. Our only desire would be for access to the original file, or for some means to sort by attributes other than “old name” and “new name.” As ready-reference, pretty much unparalleled.

Frey, C., & Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company. (1926). The Independence square neighborhood: Historical notes on Independence and Washington squares, lower Chestnut street, and the insurance district along Walnut street, in Philadelphia, together with some account of the buildings, events, and personages of State house row. Philadelphia: Penn mutual life insurance Co.
R 929.309748 P544 I38
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

Of tangential interest to researchers is Carroll Frey’s survey of the neighborhood surrounding Penn Mutual’s headquarters on Walnut between 5th and 6th, done in preparation for the addition of a tower, still extant, at the corner of 6th and Walnut. A manifestation of urban history at cross-purposes.

Skaler, R. M. (2002). West Philadelphia, University City to 52nd Street. Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia.
974.811 S626w
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

Robert Skaler adds a title to the Arcadia picture-book series; useful as an overview of major sections of the city; casual readers or those unfamiliar with the city appreciate his anecdotal descriptions, judging from the book’s Amazon reviews. For SPM metadata librarians, all the Arcadia volumes serve as quick checks to confirm an identification.

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Resources held in Philadelphia libraries

Free Library of Philadelphia

Alotta, R. I.(1990). Mermaids, monasteries, Cherokees, and Custer: The stories behind Philadelphia street names. Chicago, Ill: Bonus Books.
917.4811 AL73m
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

Alotta, R. I. (1981). Popularity: The street names of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, Pa: History Dept., Temple University.
R 917.4811 AL73P
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

Alotta is a true obsessive. Mermaids is a revision of his 1975 Street Names of Philadelphia, and a cousin to his Temple study of popular Philadelphia street names (the latter kept in Ready Reference at FLP); accessible, entertaining, and strongly recommended by the University of Pennsylvania’s reference department.

Biagi, E. L. (1970). Italian name-places in the United States: With historical & descriptive annotations and information. Philadelphia: Biagi.
929.4 B47i
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

Eminently satisfying to a core patron group of SPM, Biagi offers a broad treatment of Italian-American names and naming, reaching beyond the city at hand to demonstrate the influence of Italians on the rest of the land.

Milano, K. W. (2008). Remembering Kensington & Fishtown: Philadelphia’s riverward neighborhoods. Charleston: History Press.
974.811 M589r
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

Iatarola, L.-C. T., Historical Society of Tacony., & Iatarola, L. M. (2005). Lower Northeast Philadelphia. Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia.
974.811 Ia8L
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

Holmes, G. J. (2003). Philadelphia’s river wards. Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia.
974.811 H735p
Bibliographic record in WorldCat

Three other entries in competing series of historical picture books, bearing sound reviews by ordinary users; guidance by the Tacony Historical Society lends the Lower Northeast relevant background on place names. Holmes, of the third title, was a reporter for Philadelphia’s Public Record.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Taylor, Laura A. “An Introduction to Germantown Street Names.” Parts 1 & 2. Germantown Crier: Vol. 26, no. 4 (Fall 1974): 113-20; and Vol. 27, no. 1 (Winter 1975): 19-27.
(UPA/Ph F 159 .G3 T3 1975)

Daly, John. Genealogy of Philadelphia County Subdivisions.
(REF G 1264 .P5 D3)

Campbell, William Bucke. Old Towns and Districts of Philadelphia.
(UPA/Ph F 158.1 .C58, vol. 4 no. 5)

Three indexes, some with narrative histories and anecdotes of the progress of Philadelphia streets’ and neighborhoods’ names over time. Part of HSP’s directories collection, must be used onsite.

American Philosophical Society

Heckewelder, J.G.E. (1822) Names which the Lenni Lenape…had given to rivers, streams, places, etc.,
Mss.497.3.H35n
APS Bibliographic record

An early secondary source on the pre-contact, aboriginal names of Philadelphia and the Delaware valley and bay. Available by special request. Reprinted in the 1834 APS Transactions.

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Internet resources
Philadelphia (Pa.)., & PhillyHistory.org. (2006). Historic street name index. Philadelphia : City of Philadelphia Department of Records.
http://phillyhistory.org/HistoricStreets/default.aspx

**UPDATE**Somehow I neglected the City Archives’ Historic Street Name Index, which essentially does in real time what Moak does in print. Since it is transcribed from the source documents independently of Moak, it differs in places (e.g. Moak records “Donnaganna” for “Latona,” where the Index has “Donnacanna”)

Philadelphia neighborhoods and place names. (1990). Philadelphia, Pa: City of Philadelphia.
http://www.phila.gov/PHILS/Docs/otherinfo/placname.htm

A City Archives revision of the Library Company of Philadelphia’s 1994 Philadelphia Almanac and Citizens’ Manual, this is a gazeteer of 395 neighborhood names, tracking their progress from the time of Swedish settlement to present-day real-estate redevelopment. Includes comprehensive bibliography.

Temple University. Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab. (2010). Philadelphia neighborhoods.
http://sct.temple.edu/blogs/murl/

An ongoing MURL project documenting the city “street by street.” Of interest to staff and researchers as a source for contemporary colloquial place-name usage, background in contemporary issues, and as a collaboratively-organized online archive.

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Philadelphia institutions

Temple University Urban Archives
http://library.temple.edu/collections/urbana/overview.jsp?bhcp=1

The definitive location for topical searches in Philadelphia neighborhood history; a frequent SPM reference for our patrons seeking to broaden or illustrate their research in neighborhood history. Particularly deep photograph and moving image collections, at least the former presented via CONTENTdm.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania > Directories
http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=126

HSP’s city directories of Philadelphia run from 1785 to 1935; the Society also collects directories of similar and neighboring cities – Camden, Baltimore, Boston. The ur-text for every Philadelphia GIS database.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania > Philadelphia Neighborhoods
http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=127

For more general research into neighborhood history, HSP directs the researcher to maps, print and other collections.

City of Philadelphia. Archives.
http://www.phila.gov/PHILS/carchtxt.htm

Essentially city government’s attic, holding materials no longer germane to present city activities. Difficult to navigate in person; as above, presents excellent compiled resources on the web. For completists only.

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Library of Congress Subject Headings

Neighborhoods–Pennsylvania–Philadelphia

Philadelphia (Pa.)–History

Philadelphia (Pa.)–Description and travel

Street names–Pennsylvania–Philadelphia

Streets–Pennsylvania–Philadelphia

Street names–Pennsylvania–Philadelphia–History

Street names–Pennsylvania–Philadelphia–Directories

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Introduction

South Philadelphia Memory is a hypothetical archive with three dominant functional areas. The first is a physical collection of transcribed oral histories, personal papers, photographs and realia. The second, adjunct to the first, is a digital repository (southphillymemory.org), presenting materials from the physical collection and digital objects contributed by members of the community (in a manner similar to OhioPix). The third area is a reference reading room, providing access to physical collections, and facilitating research in local history, biography and genealogy.

Imagined community

Believing that the uses to which a collection is put are not subject to intention – recalling the example of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, which began as a private humanities library, and became the premier architectural and interior design archive of the city – South Philadelphia Memory imagines an urban community of dedicated amateurs, contributing as well as seeking colloquial knowledge, local-historical anecdotes, and information on topics of personal interest. Scholars in urban history will find broader collections at the Atwater Kent Museum, Temple University’s Urban Archives, and the Archives of the University of Pennsylvania; those more interested in entertainment will enjoy the Mummers Museum. Our collections will prove pertinent to narrow-bore scholarship in domesticity, the immigrant and migrant experience, and related topics.

Reference collection

The reference collection is a structural support to the physical and digital archives. Using it, we enable patrons and staff to create descriptions which positively identify buildings, streets and people, which distinguish among different, fluid names and which collocate like items. SPM collects reference works describing the people and places of the early city, including 19^th and 20^th century maps and plats, builders’ directories, biographical dictionaries, and secondary historical works on the city, among them:

Skaler, R. M. (2003). Philadelphia’s Broad Street: South and North. Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia. http://www.worldcat.org/title/philadelphias-broad-street-south-and-north/oclc/52982954

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission., & Environmental Research Group (Philadelphia, Pa.). (1980). South Philadelphia historic sites survey: Final report, phase I. Philadelphia: ERG. http://www.worldcat.org/title/south-philadelphia-historic-sites-survey-final-report-phase-i/oclc/7876029

O’Connell, C. A., Silcox, H. C., & Institute for Global Education and Service Learning. (2000). Struttin’ through time South Philly style: Stories and memories of South Philadelphia. Philadelphia, PA: Sponsored by Harry C. Silcox, Institute for Global Education and Service Learning. http://www.worldcat.org/title/struttin-through-time-south-philly-style-stories-and-memories-of-south-philadelphia/oclc/47219866

Alotta, R. I.(1990). Mermaids, monasteries, Cherokees, and Custer: The stories behind Philadelphia street names. Chicago, Ill: Bonus Books. http://www.worldcat.org/title/mermaids-monasteries-cherokees-and-custer-the-stories-behind-philadelphia-street-names/oclc/22863215

Jackson, J. (1931). Encyclopedia of Philadelphia. 4 vols. Harrisburg: National Historical Association.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-philadelphia/oclc/2684854

New acquisitions reviewed

Print

Main GenHisTrav 1 copy R 929.309748 P544, M687p, 2001

Moak, Jefferson M. Philadelphia street name changesChestnut Hill Almanac Genealogical Series, pubn. 2. Rev. ed. Philadelphia, PA. The Almanac, 2001. http://www.worldcat.org/title/philadelphia-street-name-changes/oclc/34833897 170 p.

Whereas Alotta’s Mermaids covers casual interest in street names, and whereas Jackson’s Encyclopedia will contain short blurbs on individual streets, the uniform resource for disambiguating location is NARA Archivist Jefferson Moak’s Street Name Changes. The University of Pennsylvania holds the 1996 edition; Historical Society of Pennsylvania holds the 2001 edition. The latter is revised, with a reverse index.

a) Scope: Moak’s work compiles the changes over time of 4300 Philadelphia street names. Its information has been at least partially incorporated into maps in the Greater Philadelphia Geohistory Network and Philadelphia Architects and Buildings databases (http://www.philageohistory.org/geohistory/ ; http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org ). As a ready-reference source, a means of faciliatating browsing, and as a means of outreach to computer-averse sectors of our patron base, Moak is unequalled.

b) Authority, currency: Jefferson Moak, as Archivist at the NARA Mid-Atlantic section in Center City, Philadelphia, authored a number of indexes and guides to historical resources, including Philadelphia Guardians of the Poor, a guide to the legal guardians of orphans and indigent children in the nineteenth-century city. Moak worked at the City of Philadelphia Archives from 1987, moving to NARA in 2000. He famously resolved a case of document theft, as reported in Smithsonian magazine( http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/making-a-difference/to-catch-a-thief.html).

The subject matter of the work and the information needs of our patron base (here to include staff using the reference collection to create descriptions of digital objects) are historical, so currency is not at a premium. The recent revision adds functionality, and is to be preferred.

c) Ease of use, arrangement: Moak’s index and reverse index are deep, locating streets by district, ward and division.

d) Suitability for audience: If descriptive metadata for objects in our digital collections are to be created distributively, some uniform guide is required to enable disambiguation and collocation. Casual onomasticians will be satisfied by Alotta. Staff, dedicated amateurs and professional scholars require Moak.

e) Format, limitations: Binding is paper, and will require some preventative preservation activity (likely a Kapco cover) before use.

f) Cost: Both editions are out-of-print. Regional specialty bookstores – such as Masthof, in Morgantown PA, which specializes in Mennonite family history – appear to sell the book at or near its original cost (viz., http://www.masthof.com/pages/jan00.html). Being in the neighborhood of $20, the only real obstacle to the book’s purchase is its scarcity.

g) Third-party reviews: Moak is introduced by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History here: http://www.wvculture.org/history/ahnews/1008news.pdf . The University of Pennsylvania notes that Moak’s index is “not fun to read”: (http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/guides/philadelphia/philahist.html#Geog) . The Bucks County Conference and Visitors Bureau regards Moak as a “fairly competent genealogist,” though we are unable to tell if this is litotes or the prejudice of the truly obsessed (http://visitbuckscounty.com/press_room.asp?press_id=28970&date_start=7/1/2009&date_end=6/30/2010 ).

h) Recommendation: Buy, at earliest opportunity. Other local repositories receive dense traffic; we can’t count on using their copy. The online applications which use Moak’s information may alienate segments of our patron base. The print index provides a window on all name changes all at once, which serves to promote the haptic encounter.

Subscription service

EBSCO Publishing (Firm). (1990). Newspaper source. Ipswich, MA: Ebsco Pub. http://www.worldcat.org/title/newspaper-source/oclc/42809251

Ebsco indexes the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News from 1997 to the present. Patrons and staff hoping to provide digital objects with authoritative descriptions of recent events may profit by subscription.

a) Scope: Ebsco’s Newspaper Source provides selective full-text for 70 national and international newspapers and 389 regional newspapers, indexes broadcast transcripts, and updates daily. As noted above, it covers a bit more than a decade of Philadelphia’s two dailies; within that scant timeframe, NS does not provide cover-to-cover indexing.

b) Authority, currency: NS is updated daily, and, as noted below, is continuously expanding its roster of titles. Ebsco is the “world’s largest subscription agent,” holding over 300,000 titles; its parent had revenue of 2.5 billion dollars as of 2008. The organization is, put mildly, likely to persist.

(http://www.ebscoind.com/groups-is-eis.asp ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBSCO_Industries )

c) Ease of use, depth of index, search capabilities: Ebsco’s interface supports Boolean operators, proximity, truncation and nested searches using parentheses in sixteen fields through dropdown menus. Searches can be faceted using additional searchable tags. (http://support.ebsco.com/help/?int=ehost&lang=en&feature_id=Databases&TOC_ID=Always&SI=0&BU=0&GU=1&PS=0&ver=live&dbs=nfhjnh,nfh ) Navigation is intuitive; execution of complex search strategies requires practice. Permanent URLs for article records are readily available; widgets enabling rapid formatting of citations are present. The roster of titles indexed apparently outpaces Ebsco’s ability to describe NS; different descriptions state the database has 38, 45 and 70 national newspapers in full-text.

d) Suitability for audience: For patrons not interested in the recent past, the database is useless. Better to search the historical newspapers available in the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America project, among them, the Philadelphia Evening Ledger (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/ ). Our parochial concerns are also not represented well by major publishers. For example, the following six South Philadelphia newspapers are contained in microform at the Free Library of Philadelphia:

Sons of Italy Times / Ordine Nuovo

South Philadelphia / South Philadelphian

South Philadelphia American / South Philadelphia American Weekly

South Philly Review

South Philadelphia Review Chronicle / South Philadelphia Chronicle

(http://libwww.library.phila.gov/faq/guides/FLP-NEWSPAPER-HOLDINGS-ALPHABETICAL.pdf ).

e) Format, limitations: Images are excluded, as are advertisements. Articles are removed from their situation on the page. Our patrons thrive on contextualizing materials; lack of context severely limits the utility of the database.

f) Cost: Retail prices vary according to the nature and size of the institutional client; they may also be subject to consortial arrangements. Ebsco itself is not forthcoming. (Indeed, Infohio password-protects its price list of core collections for school libraries: http://www.infohio.org/PriceList2009.pdf [password is infohio]) Retail subscriptions to Newspaper Source alone quoted to a New York school district as of 2007 were $2300 (http://www.ogs.state.ny.us/purchase/prices/79126S950168prices.pdf ). On the other hand, total Ebsco costs in Oregon’s academic libraries averaged about three dollars per student per year (http://www.oregon.gov/OSL/LD/technology/sdlp/2007CostTables/FinalAcademic07-08CostTable.pdf?ga=t ). Cost of subscription – in the ballpark of $2000/yr – does not include hardware and software necessary to access the database, nor does this figure provide for persistent holdings: it is a perpetual rental. Rental of the database would fail to provide access to the archives of the Philadelphia Tribune, of serious interest to neighborhood scholars, it being the city’s leading African-American newspaper; its archive is a ProQuest product.

The likelihood of any newspaper database justifying the large upfront expenditure is slim. Despite the extortionate structure of per-article use in Philadelphia Newspapers LLC’s archive, their deeper index (Inquirer back to 1981 and Daily News to 1978; http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives ) practically moots the question of using Ebsco’s product.

g) Third-party reviews: Allegheny County Libraries and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh have cancelled subscriptions to Newspaper Source (http://articles.einetwork.net/#N ); database subscriptions generally, including Ebsco’s products, were first on the chopping block for New Jersey governor Chris Christie (http://lisnews.org/nj_librarians_are_mad_hell_and_they039re_not_going_take_it_anymore ). When large, comparatively well-funded systems find the resource dispensible, the resource’s applicability to small, comparatively ill-funded institutions is put into question. Concerns have been raised about Ebsco’s exclusivity arrangements with popular and academic publishers; Ebsco has been referred to as the “evil empire” in the library blogosphere (http://lisnews.org/information_access_balance ; .http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2010/04/02/has-ebsco-become-the-new-evil-empire/ ).

h) Recommendation: Do not subscribe. Macroeconomic concerns about consolidation among database providers and exclusivity arrangements between providers and publishers are less pressing than the lack of immediate necessity SPM has for this product. Thousands of dollars could be more profitably spent in funding a collaboration with FLP to digitize the comparatively small runs of the six neighborhood papers mentioned above; preservation costs of the resultant digital archive would not exceed the cost of subscribing to – it bears repeating – a less relevant resource. The South Philadelphia digital microfilm could cohabit with other objects in the digital archive; it would be less a reference source – though also that – than a contributing element of the archive’s critical mass.

The main – albeit minor – drawback of this approach is that it passes costs to the patron base, in the form of fee-per-article access through Philadelphia Newspapers LLC.

Website

Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project. (2000). Philadelphia architects and buildings. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project. http://www.worldcat.org/title/philadelphia-architects-and-buildings/oclc/51225582

http://philadelphiabuildings.org

PAB is the predominant online resource for images and documents pertaining to the architectural history, urban planning and – insofar as places make people – social history of Philadelphia. As a subscriber and as a contributing institution to PAB, SPM could project its resources far beyond its own walls, and gain access to high-resolution images, invaluable to researchers.

a) Scope: PAB comprises digital objects describing over 35,000 Philadelphia-area structures (defined as Philadelphia County and the four adjacent counties: Delaware, Chester, Montgomery and Bucks.) Historical and architectural information is culled from photographs, lithographs, blueprints, architects’ and builders’ directories; these materials are housed in repositories around the region, but primarily come from the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, the Penn Archives, the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

(http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/about.cfm ; http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/list_institutions.cfm )

b) Authority, currency: Since all material submitted to PAB is already located in a regional repository, and since all records are edited by professional staff and spot-checked by staff at the major participants, PAB’s reliability rests on the entire community of local archivists. New images are added daily; material from the present day is included.

c) Ease of use, depth of index, search capabilities: PAB is freely to view, requiring a free user account; paying subscribers may view high-resolution images through the ER Mapper plug-in. Materials may be identified by location, building, architect, collection or published source (the latter being the bibliographic source providing data for the record.) Each category may be searched across a number of fields. Locations may be browsed by a street list and by a GIS interface. Searching partial addresses takes a long time; navigating the map is not as fluid as using the Google Maps API. Buildings are graphically described: blue for NRHP listings, red for ordinary PAB. Users can save images, and build personalized slide shows.

d) Suitability for audience: The resource is particularly well-suited for use by staff in describing objects in the digital collection; it is a fine ready-reference source for geographical and architectural queries, and for the positive identification of objects in the collection.

e) Format, limitations: Upon identifying a single property, a user may specify a search within X feet of that property. This is as close to a neighborhood browsing function as PAB gets. Names of neighborhoods are not indexed. The building subject index is a controlled vocabulary presented via a scrolling menu. Familiar keyword indexing does not apply. Unlike, say, textual descriptions in CONTENTdm, PAB’s descriptions are not automatically hyperlinked.

f) Cost: Individual subscriptions are $40/yr. Institutional access or a site-license would be subject to negotiation. Contributing institutions, of necessity, access PAB for free; extending such access to our patron base may, once again, be the subject of negotiations.

(http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/subscribe.cfm )

g) Third-party reviews: PAB is a recommended resource of institutions both self-interested (such as Princeton University’s School of Architecture; http://web.princeton.edu/sites/vrc/resources.htm ) and disinterested (such as the Glasgow School of Art; http://gsaarchitecture.blogspot.com/2009/02/philadelphia-architects-and-buildings.html ).

h) Recommendation: Purchase one subscription on behalf of reference librarian – in all likelihood, SPM’s only librarian – until site-license can be arranged.

Conclusion

The object of local history – intimate acquaintance with the defamiliarized past – is not suited to mass dissemination. Large databases and vast indexes are crucial tools for verification. NS fits neither our collection’s purpose, nor its budget. The vast majority of PAB’s utility is contained in the freely accessible aspects, including some of the name-change cross-referencing embodied in Moak’s text (viz., the historical street name of Market in Philadelphia; http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/pj_display.cfm/16742 ). With one option, the reference collection adds Moak’s Philadelphia Street Name Changes. As a ready-reference source with one function, and being in essence a list of 4300 search terms, Moak has the power to narrow searches and to deflect them from their intended course. The clarifying power of the print source makes up for its inevitable physical deterioration; for 20 dollars of book and 10 dollars of preservation, we receive 4300 indexed terms. This is an enviable rate of return.

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I got to thinking plenty of midwestern cities had cheap land and boomed after the automobile; why aren’t we talking about consolidating services and forcible relocation elsewhere?

Right now, Detroit is roughly the same size as Columbus — nearest estimates put it at 1.2 Columbuses. Detroit is always referred to in the press as sprawling, spread-out, unruly — it is about 150 sq mi., half the size of Indianapolis, one-quarter the size of Houston. Columbus peaked in 2006 at 226 sq mi. — it has a fair amount of 1970-to-present expansion, but, like Detroit, has some typically derelict 1940s inner-suburbs. Also like Detroit, it spreads its people far and wide, in little clusters. Columbus’ city center was actually built to be empty, viz.:

Working papers for the regional center study, Columbus, Ohio / prepared by Marcou, O'Leary and Associates, Hammer, Greene, Siler Associates, Barton-Aschman Associates for the Department of Development, City of Columbus and the Franklin County Regional Planning Commission. Columbus, OH: 1968.

Anyone who wants to direct me to pictures of the Centrum skating rink at Town and High (1977-1983), leave a comment. There’s this picture from the Dispatch, November 1983, but beyond that, squat. Will be hunting the State Library for 1977 stuff…

Here’s a piece from big Corb:

Le Corbusier. The city of tomorrow. Cambridge: MIT, 1971.

War — bringing the annihilation of ungovernable neighborhoods and the creation of great vistas — is the agent non pareil of successful redevelopment.

Here’s three pictures from the August 1975 Columbus Development Report.

East Broad St., Columbus, 1974

Model for National Plaza, 1974

Sky police, 1974

Turns out Google has a host of stuff about the early city. The city’s political left and right united in Christendom and Temperance, for instance:

From an 1892 history of the city, a map of mound sites in Franklin County:

Plus, a great racial breakdown of the city in 1918 drawn for a 1921 report:

…And yet to come: more snippets from Franklin County planning documents from the State Library of Ohio. Prepare yrselves, City Center!
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