Yesterday I went to Paley Library and visited the Urban Resource Center in the basement of the library. The Library is located on Temple University's Campus and it is pretty big. The Urban Resource Center on the other hand is a small and productive area in the basement where old documents of Philadelphia (atlas's, map's etc...) are documented, collected and preserved. Most of the stuff in the area is at least 30 years old, some even older. I was looking at a Map that was produced in 1901 and I could not even find a trace of the neighborhood that I currently reside in. The pictures were also pretty "ancient" with the majority of them being in black and white and incorporating the use of rudimentary and prehistoric "photo shop" techniques ranging from a dark marker to make the shading for glass reflection to the use of a colored white out to add in a piece missing from a photo. The photo's were so important to the faculty, staff and the department that when we were handling them were required to wear gloves which were actually a bit on the uncomfortable side. For the most part though I enjoyed the experience that I had yesterday.