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Welcome to Digital Maryland

Who We Are

Digital Maryland is a collaborative, statewide digital preservation program of the Enoch Pratt Free Library / Maryland State Library Resource Center. The goal of the project is to facilitate the digitization, digital preservation, and access for historical and cultural documents, images, audio, and video that record Maryland’s history.

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Partnership

Partnering with Digital Maryland has many benefits and can be adjusted to suit the needs of the organization or collection.

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New Collections

PGCMLS bookmobile

Prince George's County Memorial Library System

The PGCMLS history collection consists of digitized memorabilia of library documents, program services, promotional material, photographs of bookmobiles and library facilities, and oral histories of current and former library system employees. Most of the records document the library system’s early history, primarily the 1940’s-1970’s period. This collection offers a visual and audio overview of some of the most important events that document the library history.

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Alice Webb Memorial Collection

Alice Webb (1945-2022) was an artist and teacher in Ellicott City, Maryland. Her work reflects the beauty around her in her garden, her local community, and the places she visited. Although Alice earned a BA in Graphic Design from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, she was basically a self-taught watercolorist. She will often create paintings and etchings of the same subject, one serving a study for the other. Alice’s works in watercolors, oils, and etchings have been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows on the regional, national and international level. She won awards for her paintings in competitions throughout the United States and her work was featured on the cover of the Baltimore Sun section: HOMETOWN GUIDES for the local Maryland counties.

Alice earned signature membership in the Baltimore Watercolor Society, the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society, the Louisiana Watercolor Society and Potomac Valley Watercolorists. She served as president of the Baltimore Watercolor Society for four years. She was featured in American Artist Magazine and Watercolor Basics magazine. She supported herself as a full-time artist through selling prints of her work and teaching painting classes at her studio.

This collection was put together in her memory with the help of her husband, Glen Webb, and in collaboration with the Howard County Historical Society.

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Maryland Vice Commission Reports - Enoch Pratt Free Library

During the early twentieth century, when progressive reformers were attempting to address problems resulting from industrialism and urbanization, Vice Commissions were set up in cities across the country. Their primary concerns were so-called “white slavery,” a term that was used for the practice of organized coercion of unwilling persons into prostitution, and other crimes involving the commercialized sex industry. Historians often point to fears arising from increased numbers of immigrants and increased urbanization as providing the impetus for the establishment of these commissions.

The Maryland Vice Commission was appointed by Maryland Governor Phillips Lee Goldsborough in 1913. It began to report out in 1915. Its main concern was prostitution, whether to keep it segregated in vice districts, where there were disorderly houses, or to break up the vice districts, which could result in streetwalking and pimping. Because investigators discovered such an abundance of vice, the report was controversial and caused official embarrassment, especially in Baltimore. In fact, Baltimore’s mayor called it, “entirely untrue, improper and unfair.” The typewritten, marked-up volumes digitized here are from the Enoch Pratt Free Library's Maryland Department. Only the fifth volume was commercially published.

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