Women’s History Month is coming to a close. Therefore, I’d like to end the month with an interesting story of how Indianapolis was one of the first cities to have its own female police force. In the early 1900s, it was an extremely radical idea to let a woman be a police officer. Los Angeles, […]
Couldn’t make it to New York Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week is just too far away? Here’s a sneak peek, la 1937. A perk of working at Indiana Historical Society is that sometimes I get a sneak peek of what’s new in the collection. This time it’s really new to us. This Janal?ne Fashion […]
It’s Black History Month. The month we learn and celebrate the achievements of black Americans. Here at the History Center, students and teachers can research the Hoosier ties of one of the most famous black female business owners Madam C.J. Walker. While Walker wasn’t born in Indiana, she is a notable Hoosier who created her […]
Have you ever browsed through the Digital Image Collection and wondered who scans all of these images? Well, I am one of them! I have been scanning panoramic photographs and negatives from several collections housed at IHS since July 2015. So far, I have completed about 500 scans. Most of these images date from the […]
Mapping Indiana: Five Centuries of Treasures from the Indiana Historical Society is the most recent publication from IHS Press and is endorsed by the Indiana Bicentennial Commission. It is a 10-pound, 320-page, hand-stitched, full-color marriage of information and beauty. Forgive the flight of fancy, but this is truly one of the most beautiful books I […]
Last summer, reference head Amy Vedra and my predecessor, Alyssa Boge, asked collections staff to share some of their favorite things currently held in the collections of the Indiana Historical Society. Eleven items were then selected to go on display in the library, along with explanations of the objects? distinctiveness. Library patrons and staff were […]
You hear odd things in the hallways of the History Center. Recently, I heard “The Great Squirrel Invasion of 1822.” That got my attention, so I did some digging. Though it sounds hilarious, and the picture it paints is even more so, this was a devastating incident for Indianapolis residents and farmers. We know all […]
Behind-the-scenes in the Indiana Historical Society, people work to preserve Indiana?s past. They care for, organize and share the many artifacts in our collection. In the process, they get to see old maps, read personal correspondence, and discover unique objects and stories. Since they get to see so many items in the collection, I asked […]
One of the best parts of working at a place like IHS is that there?s always something new to discover. Sometimes you stumble across cool images, collections or book titles. Other times you stumble across items that are a twist on a classic. Take this miniature book titled Pandora?s Box as an example. At 2 […]
Twenty-five dollars and a sunburn … that?s what Audrey Howland, then a 19-year-old model and dancer, got for posing for this poster, advertising the Indiana Dunes along the South Shore Line. School has started again and a few leaves have even started changing color languid summer days spent at the beach seem long gone. Yet, […]
