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About the Collection
The People's Contest is directed by a team of scholars and librarians to advance scholarship on the Pennsylvania home front during the Civil War era. The website is a resource station for the vast and diverse collections of archival material around the state—from local county historical societies to large state museums and libraries—and point scholars in promising new directions of inquiry. Through The People's Contest website, researchers have access
- to bibliographic records for collections residing at libraries, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout the state with an emphasis on technologically hidden and unprocessed collections;
- to images and transcriptions of research materials; and
- to interpretive essays, scholarly projects and links to outside sources.
The People's Contest is a collaborative project of the Richards Civil War Era Center, The Pennsylvania State University Libraries, Senator John Heinz History Center, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and is part of a series of initiatives to commemorate the Civil War sesquicentennial.