Announcements

Call For Papers—Joint Issue with Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

Special Issue: Teaching Pennsylvania History (Fall 2014)

The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and Pennsylvania History are planning a joint publication, scheduled for 2014, on teaching Pennsylvania history. We invite teachers who have a special interest in a topic such as women’s history, African American history, political bosses, religious sects, a particular event (Coal Strike of 1902/3, Centennial Exhibition of 1876, etc.), to prepare an article that describes their method, perhaps with illustrations, documents, and connection to websites, that would help others teach that subject in the context of Pennsylvania and U.S. history at the college level (though articles that suggest how to adapt the presented materials for high school use are welcome). Articles should be about 15–20 pages, double-spaced. Please indicate any documents or other resources you would like to include, either in print or online.

Submission details: Please send inquiries to either Tamara Gaskell (tgaskell@hsp.org) or Bill Pencak (wap1@psu.edu).

Deadline for submissions: January 1, 2013.

2012 Winner of the Donald G. Davis Article Award

Bernadette Lear, Behavioral Sciences and Education Librarian at Pennsylvania State University Harrisburg, is the 2012 winner of the Donald G. Davis Article Award presented by the American Library Association (ALA) Library History Round Table (LHRT). This award is given every second year to recognize the best article written in English in the field of United States and Canadian library history, including the history of libraries, librarianship and book culture in the previous two calendar years.

Lear’s winning article, “Yankee Librarian in the Diamond City: Hannah Packard James, the Osterhout Free Library of Wilkes-Barre, and the public library movement in Pennsylvania,” was published in Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 78, 123–62.

The committee cited “Bernadette’s exceptional use of a variety of primary sources, her attention to Hannah James’s personality and personal life as part of the context of her work as a librarian, and the attention to a conservative librarian during the Progressive Era,” said Holly Willett, chair of the Library History Round Table Davis Award Committee. “We believe the article opens the way for a closer examination of that era as a contested space,” added Willett.

Forthcoming Publication

Michael Abelberg, author of an excellent history of Monmouth County, New Jersey during the American Revolution (reviewed by William Pencak in the Journal of Military History), has written a new book, The Razing of Tinton Falls: Voices of the American Revolution, also published by the History Press. The book focuses on an unstudied Revolutionary War event: A Loyalist raid in June 1779 that resulted in the razing of the village, the kidnapping of its leaders, and the death of the militia officer who led the counter-attack. The book includes non-fiction essays built on twenty years of research, as well as ten fictionalized narratives of the raid written in the voices of ten real people who experienced the raid from different vantage points (i.e., militiaman, pacifist, child, runaway slave turned Loyalist). For more information, consult the History Press Web site or michael.adelberg@gmail.com.