Lancaster History Research Collections

The LancasterHistory online Research Collections provides searchable access to nearly 300,000 items from their historic collections, from library books and archival documents to photographs and three-dimensional objects.

LancasterHistory is also proud to announce the launch of the James Buchanan Presidential Library, which provides online access, for the first time, to the papers of 15th United States President James Buchanan and his family.

This collection includes  more than 3,500 items associated with James Buchanan, Harriet Lane, and James Buchanan Henry, extended family members, associates, and Wheatland, Buchanan's home. Scholars and researchers can search and view the digitized collection to examine the events that transpired during Buchanan’s presidency and gain a better understanding of how the United States responded to one of the most fraught periods in American history.

The LancasterHistory Research Collections site is powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface, which provides features such as automatic spelling corrections, intuitive search suggestions, and refinable search filters.

Data in the site is sourced and regularly updated from a variety of back-end systems: PastPerfect for archival descriptions, artifacts and photographs, and MARC records exported from their library’s cataloguing system. Andornot developed systems to transform each different data source into a common format and index it in our Andornot Discovery Interface, for searching across all collections, while still preserving the metadata unique to each record and data source.

The full text of many linked digital documents is indexed, to further expand search options.

Searching across all LancasterHistory collections previously required many separate searches, using different search strategies and tools. Now, with all resources in a single site, searching is faster and easier and reveals more records to users with every search.

As the site is hosted by Andornot, there's nothing for LancasterHistory staff to do or worry about, and they can add new data as often as they like.