The original Coal Culture website project was funded through the Library Services and Technology Act. The IUP Special Collections and University Archives applied for an LSTA grant to make collections relating to the mining history of western Pennsylvania available online.
Our holdings are often consulted by scholars, but limited hours and fragility of manuscript materials make our materials far too often inaccessible by traditional means. The grant was awarded in 2006, and the Pennsylvania Coal Culture website is the result of this grant. It provides digitized primary sources and photographs, Coal Culture background information, timeline, lesson plans, and a bibliography to make the information more useful for research.
The holdings of the Special Collections and University Archives at Indiana University of Pennsylvania support the research of faculty, students, and private scholars. This includes the preservation of significant regional collections with a particular emphasis on business, industry, and labor that are related to the coal, iron, steel, and transportation industries.
Our regional focus extends from western Pennsylvania to western New York and eastern Ohio. Collections beyond this region with a focus on coal, steel, railroad, or labor are also of interest in that they serve to develop the depth of an integrated collection.
Background essays were provided by historians James Dougherty, Irwin Marcus, and Eileen Mountjoy. Many of the materials that have been digitized were collected by Eileen Mountjoy while she worked in the IUP Special Collections and University Archives. Lesson plans were prepared by Soo Chun Lu. The Pennsylvania Coal Culture website contains images of artifacts available at the Historical and Genealogical Society of Indiana County.
The Special Collections and University Archives at Indiana University of Pennsylvania want to acknowledge the contributions of the following people to the development of the Coal Culture project. Special thanks to Eileen Mountjoy who wrote many of the background essays and who collected and organized Manuscript Group 94: The Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company Media Collection, from which many of our photographs were taken. This project would not have been possible without the assistance of Amanda Ashour, Jean Popovich, and Bobbie Zapor. Please read the Informational Brochure.
Project Director
Dr. Theresa McDevitt, IUP Government Documents librarian, mcdevitt@iup.edu
Historical Consultants
- Dr. James Dougherty, IUP professor emeritus, Department of Sociology
- Dr. Irwin Marcus, IUP professor emeritus,History Department
Educational Consultant
- Dr. Soo Chun Lu, IUP History professor, Soo.Lu@iup.edu
Materials from the Historical and Genealogical Society of Indiana County
- Coleen Chambers, director, ichs@ptd.net
- Herbert Gleditsch, president, ichs@ptd.net
- The Historical and Genealogical Society of Indiana County, Pennsylvania
Materials on Heilwood, Pennsylvania, from the Collection of Ronald Kuzemchak
- Ronald Kuzemchak, zoo21oom@yahoo.com
- The Early History of Heilwood, Pennsylvania