Digital Excellence
The Digital Library is an essential and innovative program of the University of Houston Libraries. Digitization greatly enhances the number of people that can view unique and wonderful collections. Our diverse users include faculty and grad students, community users, local historians, commercial users and all levels of educators. They can access these collections from their office, their home, or their school with the touch of a mouse. Libraries across the globe are focusing on digitization to increase visibility to original collections and scholarly research. Today, the Digital Library provides materials to users from 64 countries across the globe!
The goal is to showcase digital collections of materials documenting the history of the University of Houston, City of Houston, and State of Texas, as well as other historically and culturally significant materials related to the University's teaching and research mission. Support of the Digital Library provides us with the funds necessary to process and digitize our collections, purchase essential equipment and materials, develop new programs and offer student internships.
A few of our collections include:
- Houstonian Yearbook Collection: The Houstonian is the yearbook produced by the University of Houston student yearbook staff. It spans the 80+ years of the University's history. The UH Digital Library has digitized each published version.
- 1890-1935 Home Retail Pamphlet Collection - comprised of a diverse array of historic retail brochures, pamphlets and catalogs from the William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library's Rare Books Room. The collection spans 45 years, from a Jap-A-Lac Varnish pamphlet published by Glidden in 1890, to a 1935 Homestead Fires catalog of "truly appropriate fireplace heaters".
- Historic Texas Postcards - The 243 postcards in this collection present colorful views of Texas' past, from Houston in the east to El Paso out west, from Laredo down south to Amarillo up north. The painted, sketched, and photographed images depict historic buildings, street scenes, and landscapes to reveal Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and other locales as they were in the early 1900s.
Currently, several UH alums sponsored yearbooks including: