Library Collections

Federal and State Documents

Pennsylvania State Documents Depository

The State Library is the official depository for printed publications of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This collection provides an historical repository of materials of the government of Pennsylvania from the 1700s to the present. A system of depository libraries has been set up so that many state publications can be used at locations outside of Harrisburg. Many of the publications are available electronically and may be located and accessed through our catalog.

Federal Documents Depository

The State Library participates in the U.S. Government Printing Office Federal Depository Program. The collection dates back to the mid 1800s, with new materials being received on a continual basis. The State Library is the Regional Federal Depository Library for the Commonwealth; and, as such, receives a copy of every U.S. government publication distributed to depository libraries. Many federal publications are published electronically and may be located and accessed through our catalog, while others are available on the web at the GovInfo | U.S. Government Publishing Office​ or USA.gov. For more information about conducting research with our Documents collection, please check out the Do​cuments Research Guide.

Rare Collections

The State Library of Pennsylvania began collecting books with its official founding in 1745 and continues to build its unique collection of materials by, for, and about Pennsylvania. Our rare and special collections include several groupings.

Assembly Collection
The core of the State Library's Rare Collections Library is the Original Assembly Collection which numbers over 400 extant volumes. These books were purchased by the Pennsylvania Assembly, beginning in 1745 for the legislators' reference in governing the Commonwealth. This collection contains primarily law books, but also dictionaries, books on architecture, philosophy, history and religion.

Pennsylvania Imprints
Rare books published by presses in Pennsylvania cities large and small, between 1685 and 1865. These imprints include: (1) religious tracts, works of piety and sermons, (2) almanacs, (3) political tracts and legislative proceedings, (4) reports of social welfare, abolitionist, women's suffrage and other societies, (5) works of history and geography, especially school textbooks, and (6) juvenile books.

Miscellaneous Rarities
The State Library's collection of rare works also includes a wide variety of non-Pennsylvania imprints, dating from the incunabula period of the 15th century through the 20th century. The earliest volume in the collection is Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle (Liber chronicarum) (1493). This varied collection—much of it published by European presses—ranges from William Penn's plea for religious toleration, Christian liberty as it was soberly desired in a letter to certain foreign states upon occasion of their late severity of their inhabitants, merely for their different persuasion and practice in point of faith and worship towards God (London, 1675), and George Whitfield's pamphlet on The enthusiasm of Methodists and papists compar'd (1749) to Louis Agassiz's Contributions to the natural history of the United States of America (1857).

The Pamphlet Collection
Another important rare collection, especially valuable for the study of Pennsylvania's social and intellectual history in the 19th and 20th centuries, is the Pamphlet Collection of some four thousand volumes. Examples from this important rare resource include Dorothea Dix's Memorial soliciting a state hospital for the insane (1845), A report of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States and the judges thereof , in the case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sanford (1857), and an Address upon the late Joseph Leidy, a eulogy (the famous University of Pennsylvania paleontologist) offered by William Hunt (1892). The State Library has been focusing on digitizing this unique collection and titles from it can be accessed online.

For more information about conducting research in our Rare and Special Collections, please contact Michael Lear, Rare Collections Librarian, at mlear@pa.gov or 717-783-5982.

Interesting Collection Tidbits

Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book

A favorite Pennsylvania publication often requested by visitors to the State Library’s Rare Collections is Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book. Godey’s Lady’s Book, founded by Philadelphia publisher Louis Godey in 1830, and edited by Sarah Josepha Hale for four decades, was the most successful women’s magazine in nineteenth-century America. Despite an expensive yearly subscription rate of $3.00, Godey’s was the most popular American women’s magazine of its day with a peak circulation of 150,000 subscribers.

Under Hale’s leadership Godey’s became the most influential American magazine of the nineteenth century and a platform for women’s interests. Among the causes she championed were women’s education and opening more professions to women. One of the most famous traditions she espoused was the Thanksgiving holiday, which she lobbied for and promoted with recipes and features in the magazine’s pages. Hale considered Queen Victoria a model of femininity and hired Lydia Sigourney to cover the activities of the Royals in England. Because of Sigourney’s reporting, American women followed the Queen’s example of wearing a white wedding dress and American families celebrated Christmas with decorated evergreen trees. Hale maintained that a “Woman’s Influence” consisted primarily of exercising moral authority over her husband and children by the practice of domesticity and piety in the home.

Hale gave the publication a reputation for the highest editorial standards, and only accepted original works. Contributors to the magazine included Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving and the British-American playwright, novelist and children’s author Frances Hodgson Burnett. In 1845 Godey began copyrighting every issue of the magazine to discourage other magazines and newspapers from stealing its material. Eager to cultivate a national readership, both Hale and Godey avoided direct political involvement in the issues of the day. For this reason Godey dismissed an assistant editor Sara Jane Lippincott for publishing an anti-slavery article in the abolitionist newspaper the National Era. When Godey’s refused to take a stand at the outbreak of the Civil War, the magazine lost a third of its readership.

Godey sold the Lady’s Book to John Hill Seyes Haulenbeek in 1877. Haulenbeek continued to publish the magazine until his death in 1898. The Rare Collections of the State Library owns a large run of original issues of Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book, stretching from 1840-1888. If you would like to see any of these, please contact Michael Lear, Rare Collections Librarian to make an appointment at mlear@pa.gov or 717-783-5982.

Pennsylvania’s Assembly Bible

Undoubtedly, the book in the Rare Collections of the State Library that gets the most consistent exposure and regular use is Pennsylvania’s Assembly Bible. Although it is a large folio edition of the King James Bible, printed by the King’s printer John Baskett at Oxford in 1739, little else distinguishes the work. In 1753 the Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly Isaac Norris and Representative Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia ordered this bible along with other books and maps “for the use of the House.” The bible sat on a lectern in the Assembly hall of the State House, and all meetings of the Assembly opened and closed with readings from it. Members also took the oath of office or made their solemn affirmations upon its covers. The Assembly Bible still possesses its original binding of dark red morocco leather. In 1767 the gilt letters, “Assembly of Pennsylvania,” were added to the cover by Philadelphia bookbinder Samuel Taylor. For a time the practice of members’ swearing in on the Assembly Bible fell into abeyance. But, in honor of the 300th anniversary of the formation of the Commonwealth on July 21, 1981, the practice was resumed.

To find out more about Pennsylvania’s Assembly Bible, or to see it, contact Michael Lear, Rare Collections Librarian to make an appointment at melear@pa.gov or 717-783-5982.

Historic World War I Posters Digitized

The Pennsylvania State Archives, in cooperation with the State Library of Pennsylvania, has digitized a collecti​on of World War I posters from its Manuscript Group 200 – Poster Collection and made them available online. This assemblage consists of 258 posters, most of which include color or black-and-white illustrations. The posters were produced primarily on a national scale, although some were also made locally. Most were created in the United States, however, a number were manufactured in Europe, particularly in Britain, France and Italy. Some portray famous and legendary figures such as Joan of Arc and Uncle Sam, while others feature illustrations of common soldiers and civilians. The posters helped to fan the fires of patriotism throughout the United States during the Great War, and helped to transition the country’s position from one of isolationism to one of openly becoming military partners with the Allied Forces in Europe.

World War I began in Europe in July 1914, shortly after Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist on June 28. Initially the United States remained neutral as the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria) fought against the Allied Powers (France, Great Britain, Russia and Italy). However, in April 1917, the United States declared war against Germany, and later that year against Austria-Hungary. The impetus, according to President Woodrow Wilson, was Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

Numerous posters were produced to encourage the purchase of Liberty Bonds during the four Liberty Loan Acts to help finance the United States’ war efforts. Other prominent themes were: Recruitment into the Armed Forces, Food Conservation, Red Cross, United War Work Campaign and the YMCA/YWCA.

Various posters sent messages to the home front advising people to do all they could to support the war effort.

Numerous World War I posters were directed at women in roles such as mothers, gardeners, shoppers and seamstresses. Mothers were encouraged to send their sons off to war, create victory gardens, shop only for essentials and sew and knit clothing for their families and the troops overseas. Unlike World War II posters, the ones from the First World War did not often depict women as part of the manufacturing team for the war effort.

The posters were created by famous, obscure and, in some cases, unknown illustrators. Many were printed by federal agencies such as the Federal Recruitment Office and the National War Garden Commission. The posters are full of color and dramatic symbolism. They were printed to arouse the American fighting spirit and the will to sacrifice on the home front. The United States intervention in World War I led to victory for the Allied Forces and the end of the First World War on November 11, 1918.