Lehigh University Libraries Special Collections is dedicated to increasing digital access to its holdings. Internet accessible material is constantly being added through both grant-funded projects and the regular digitization of frequently used or significant items.
Photograph Collection
Included in this collection are over 17,000 digitized photographs related to Lehigh University.
Postcard Collection
This collection features over 1,200 digitized postcards related to Lehigh and the Lehigh Valley. Many of these postcards are part of a gift from the South Bethlehem Historical Society.
Stereograph Collection
Special Collections more than 120 historical stereographs of the Lehigh campus, North and South Bethlehem, and famous buildings and structures across the United States and Canada.
These stereographs can also be viewed and modified through the New York Public Library's Stereogranimator site.
Illuminated Manuscripts
A multi-institutional project to digitize and make available medieval manuscripts.
Digital Bridges
A collection of over thirty representative historical bridge engineering monographs, manuals, and artifacts. This project was underwritten in part by Library Services & Technology Act (LSTA) funds administered through the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Library's NETShare program.
The Problem of the Planets
Digital editions of Nicholas Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium [On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres] and Tycho Brahe's Astronomiae instauratae mechanica [Instruments for the Restoration of Astronomy]
I Remain
Special Collection's autographed letters collection including letters, manuscripts, and ephemera from over 400 writers throughout the centuries.
Lehigh Valley Geology
Two volumes from the Pennsylvania Geological Survey fourth series that provide a wealth of detail about Lehigh and Northampton Counties, including their geography, geology, meteorology, and history.
PACSCL Digital Diaries
This Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) project provides an online archive of diaries drawn from PACSCL member collections. This resource allows researchers an intimate view into a wide variety of personalities, largely from Philadelphia, as they went about their daily lives and commented on the world around them.
Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company
A project to digitize the maps and drawings of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company held by Lehigh University's Special Collections. This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis
A Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) project to create the country's largest regional online collection of medieval manuscripts. Fifteen participating libraries will create images and descriptions for 160,000 manuscript pages, which will be available online through the University of Pennsylvania Libraries’ OPenn manuscript portal (http://openn.library.upenn.edu). This project is part of the Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives initiative of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Other Digitized Materials
Special Collections is constantly digitizing a broad array of material held in its collection. Much of this digitized material is accessible through Lehigh Libraries' CONTENTdm website.