KU Digital Collections

This web site currently hosts three databases containing three-dimensional images of invertebrate macrofossils, three-dimensional images of trace fossils, and two-dimensional images of invertebrate microfossil slides. Funds for the creation of the digital images presented on this web site were provided by a grant from the KU Digital Libraries Initiative. Virtual specimens of well-preserved, invertebrate fossils have been created so that they may be introduced into classrooms and teaching laboratories at KU and to researchers and the general public worldwide.

The Digital Scriptorium is a growing image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. It bridges the gap between a diverse user community and the limited resources of libraries by means of sample imaging and extensive rather than intensive cataloguing. The University of Kansas Libraries are a contributing partner in this project.

This online collection, selected from 25,000 photographs in the Dole Archive, includes images relating to Bob Dole's childhood, youth, college experience, sports involvement, war-time service and recovery, early law career, Congressional, Senatorial and Presidential campaigns, family, staff and colleagues. The images also highlight major legislative and humanitarian contributions by Senator Dole during both his political career and post-retirement projects. They illustrate his work with the Food Stamp Program, the Bi-Partisan Social Security Act, the International Commission on Missing Persons, the World War II Memorial Committee, and other important endeavors.

This database collects recent theses and dissertations from the University of Kansas. It will also soon contain turn-of-the-century theses and dissertations, many of which were handwritten, hand drawn, or hand colored.

The University of Kansas Libraries is pleased to provide access to a growing number of EAD formatted finding aids from the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. These inventories reveal the wide variety of materials found in manuscript collections, including photographs, correspondence, printed material, diaries and drawings.

Florence Nightingale letters held by the Clendening History of Medicine Library, University of Kansas Medical Center.

From the Ground Up is an on-going collaboration between artists living in Lawrence, and scientists and teachers from the the University of Kansas and the Kansas Geological Survey. The project seeks to capture the imagination of students of all ages who are interested in the landscape around them and exploring the connections between human history, art, geography, biology, and other disciplines. The collection is organized by content modules, each containing an archive of artworks which serve as a basis for, or a response to, work in other disciplines. Each artwork has been mapped to a particular GPS coordinate which allows users to locate them on a map. The metadata for each image also includes a specific location link to Google Maps.

The Jesuatti Book of Remedies is a compilation of medical remedies that the friars of the Order of Saint Jerome used to cure the sick and to care for the human body in the 16th Century and earlier. Compiled sometime before 1562 by friar Giovanni Andrea from Brescia, Italy, the book is organized according to the condition for which the remedy was used, whether the remedy was a galenical mixture of herbs, a distillate using the alchemical methods employed by the friars, or a prayer. A few remedies were incantations or amulets to protect against an illness or harm. This digital edition enables online browsing and searching of the full English-language text and scanned page images of the book. The digital edition also includes an extensive glossary of plants, animals, and minerals mentioned in the recipes, along with explanatory footnotes and a preface prepared by Professor Norton.

Aerial photographs of Kansas City, taken in 2002 by Alex S. MacLean. The project was sponsored by the Kansas City Design Center. The Luna Insight images are hosted by the University of Kansas.

The University of Kansas Anthropological Research and Cultural Collections curates approximately 2000 cubic feet of artifacts recovered from investigations of 23 Kansas City Hopewell Archaeological sites, which represents the largest holdings of materials from this culture in the United States. The Kansas City Hopewell represents the westernmost regional variant of the Hopewell archaeological complex that dates to the Middle Woodland or Early Ceramic (100 B.C. - 700 A.D.) period. These images are comprised images of artifacts and scanned photographs from five Hopewell sites in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Historical photographs from the Kansas Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas (a subset of the Art and Cultural Heritage Collection). The Kansas Collection is the regional history division of the University of Kansas Libraries. The Photo Collection consists of images documenting the history of Kansas, the region, and the people who have lived here.

The Kansas Collection, Kenneth Spencer Library, University of Kansas, houses and provides access to an extensive collection of Sanborn maps for 241 Kansas towns and cities covering a period from 1883 through the 1830s. With funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the maps from 1883 – 1922 are now digitally available.

The two-year project, called "Western Trails," aided in the creation of digital copies of source materials related to the historic western migration of the U.S. population, whether on foot, by horse-drawn conveyance, by rail, or by highway. Kansas partners in the project include the Boot Hill Museum and Kansas Heritage Center in Dodge City, the Kansas State Historical Society, the Special Collections Department at Wichita State University, and the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas.

The Kansas Biological Survey Kansas Wildflowers database includes images of common wildflowers of Kansas. Image descriptions include common and scientific names, as well as information one might expect to find in a field guide.

The Leon K. Hughes Photography Collection is a chronicle of African American family and community life in Wichita, Kansas from the late 1940s through the 1970s. The images provide an “inside” view of African American life rarely seen by the general public. They show family gatherings celebrating marriages, birthdays and graduations and reveal a vibrant community life comprised of a wide array of churches, schools and organizations. Together, these photographs suggest how African Americans, for centuries, refused to allow the nation’s color line deny them experiences of love, faith, dignity, and grace. It is this rich context of family and community life in Wichita, Kansas that enabled the city’s African American youth to express their pride and determination by successfully organizing the nation’s first successful lunch counter sit-in during the beginning of the Modern Civil Rights Movement, July 1958.

Taking Special Collections outside the Library by Digital Repackaging: Primary Sources from the Spencer Research Library for the Study of Mediterranean Cartography, Navigation, Travel and Trade 1300-1800.

The Pennell Collection consists of more than 30,000 glass plate negatives that represent the life work of Joseph J. Pennell, a successful commercial studio photographer who worked in Junction City, Kansas, from the early 1890s to the early 1920s. It provides a comprehensive view of life in a moderately-sized, Midwestern, army-post town on the Great Plains at the turn of the last century. The University of Kansas acquired the negatives, along with 10 ledgers of business records, in 1950.

This collection of images documents works of art in KU's Spencer Museum of Art (a subset of the Art and Cultural Heritage Collection). With a permanent collection of more than 25,000 objects spanning much of world art history, the Spencer Museum of Art is one of the finest university art museums in the nation. Strengths include medieval art; European and American paintings, sculpture, and prints; Japanese Edo-period painting; 20th-century Chinese painting; photography; regional art; and more than 150 quilts. Sallie Casey Thayer, a Kansas City art collector, established the KU art collection in 1917.

In 1870, Wyville Thomson, Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University, persuaded the Royal Society of London to ask the British Government to furnish one of Her Majesty's ships for a prolonged voyage of exploration across the oceans of the globe. On 7 December 1872, the expedition put to sea from Sheerness aboard the corvette H.M.S. Challenger. The Challenger Expedition created over 40 nautical charts that record the course of the expedition. These charts have been scanned.

Explore the turbulent times of "Bleeding Kansas." Hundreds of personal letters, diaries, photos, and maps bring to life the settling of Kansas during the fierce debate over slavery.

The University Archives is the repository for the records documenting the history of the University of Kansas. Included are the official papers of the chancellors, records of student and faculty activities, and selected publications and papers of alumni and faculty. This collection contains a selection from their photograph holdings.

Onitsha Market Literature consists of stories, plays, advice and moral discourses published primarily in the 1960s by local presses in the lively market town of Onitsha, an important commercial site in the Igbo-speaking region of southeastern Nigeria. In the fresh and vigorous genre of Onitsha Market Literature, the commoner wrote pulp fiction and didactic handbooks for those who perused the bookstalls of Onitsha Market, one of Africa’s largest trading centers.