Cincinnati Historical Society Library

The Cincinnati Historical Society Library is housed at the Cincinnati Museum Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Since its founding as the library of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio in 1831, the Cincinnati Historical Society Library has been collecting and preserving materials relating to the greater Cincinnati area, the state of Ohio, and the Old Northwest Territory. The collections are especially strong in 18th and 19th century travel accounts written by visitors to the region and in the history of 19th and 20th century political, educational, and social institutions. The library has one of the most significant regional history collections in the United States.

The library catalog — referred to as the Star Online Catalog — covers the books, pamphlets, periodicals, maps, newspapers, manuscripts, and photographs available at the Library. It currently contains over 30,000 records, which still represent just a small portion of the Library's entire collection. In addition, STAR is used to maintain several other databases: Index to Local History Resources, Ohio Civil War Monuments, Manuscript Registers, and the Digital Journal.

Many thousands of pages from five 19th- and 20th-century historic journals have recently been scanned and digitized, through a state-of-the-art process, so they could become available online: the Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, The Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, Queen City Heritage, The Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science and the Journal of the Society of Natural History. The database representing these journals includes the photos and illustrations that appeared in the original publications and is full-text searchable.

In announcing the expansion of the materials available online, John Fleming, vice president of museums for Cincinnati Museum Center, said: "Put simply, this is the best material written on Cincinnati, available to anyone in the world with a computer. Using the latest technologies to interpret and share our regional history is just one of the many important ways that Museum Center serves this community."

URL: http://library.cincymuseum.org