Volume 37, Issue 1

In the mid-1960's a group of Benedictine monks at Saint John's Abbey and University in central Minnesota faced a challenge. They were wondering what could be done to preserve the precious hand-written religious books located in European monasteries and libraries. The devastation of World War II was a recent memory, and the potential loss of cultural material in the event of the Cold War suddenly turning “hot” was difficult to imagine. The monks had two goals: the preservation of the manuscript's contents and the creation of a means for scholars to easily access them. The task was daunting – thousands of manuscripts existed in dozens of Western European locations.

Introduction The University of the Pacific has been a part of California history since its founding as the state's first chartered institution of higher education in 1851. In support of the University's teaching and research mission, the University Library's Special Collections department has amassed a wealth of manuscript collections and historic documents that provide valuable insights into California's rich history. Special Collections has recently undertaken digitization initiatives to expand online access to its unique holdings. This article will review these digital collections, and discuss some of the selection criteria and descriptive practices used in creating them.

The University of Iowa, first in the nation to offer advanced degrees for creative writing and home of the famed Iowa Writer's Workshop, has a long history of turning out many of America's best-known authors. However, one of the most popular and enduring novelists ever to have graduated from the UI is hardly a household name. Mildred Wirt Benson, under the much more familiar pseudonym Carolyn Keene, wrote the first 23 Nancy Drew mystery novels. The longest-running juvenile fiction series ever, the series has sold over 200 million books, received translation into 25 languages, and inspired adaptation for numerous film and television versions. In 2007, staff of the UI's Digital Library Services department embarked on a digitization project (http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/mwb) to provide clues to the mysterious author behind the beloved Nancy Drew character.