This is the first entry in a blog dedicated to tracking and commenting on the Easton Library Company database project.  In case you’re wondering what the project is, here are the basics.

The first public library in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley was the Easton Library Company, a shareholding institution modeled on the Library Company of Philadelphia.  It opened in 1811 with 100 shareholders, and from that day until 1862, all the ELC’s loan activity was recorded in five folio ledgers that still survive in the current Easton Area Public Library, a descendent institution of the ELC.

Those five ledgers have been digitized by staff at Lafayette College’s Skillman Library, and a research team is currently working on transcribing, interpreting, and entering the ELC’s loan records into a database that will be available for free to the public on the Web once completed.

An earlier phase of this project involved transcribing, verifying, and correcting the ELC’s printed 1855 catalog, the latest of three catalogs produced by ELC librarians (the others, in manuscript only, were made in 1816 and 1832).  Please email Prof. Chris Phillips if you’re interested in gaining access to the spreadsheet we’ve generated from the 1855 catalog.

As we work toward transcribing the loan records and moving the database closer to launch, members of the research team and other collaborators will contribute posts discussing methods, findings, interesting background information, and (hint, hint) answers to any questions that readers might have.  Anyone is welcome to post a comment, subject to moderation by the site’s administrator, Prof. Chris Phillips of Lafayette College.

Please also check out the “about” page for further information, and watch for more pages to be developed providing more details about the ELC, its members, and its books as the project continues.