UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State University Libraries’ Open Publishing program has launched “The Pittsburgh Novel: Western Pennsylvania in Fiction and Drama, 1792–2022,” an online bibliography compiled by Peter Oresick and Jake Oresick.

The bibliography was published Jan. 31, the same day the Pittsburgh City Council declared as “Peter Oresick Day” and “The Pittsburgh Novel Day” in the city of Pittsburgh. 

“The Pittsburgh Novel: Western Pennsylvania in Fiction and Drama, 1792–2022” is an annotated bibliography of all known fiction with a significant geographical setting in any of Pennsylvania’s 26 westernmost counties published between 1792 and 2022. The brainchild of the late Peter Oresick, a western Pennsylvania literature scholar, publisher, professor and poet, “The Pittsburgh Novel” is all-inclusive, with more than 1,500 works whose settings span all 26 western Pennsylvania counties. The bibliography includes national bestsellers like Michael Chabon’s 1988 debut novel, “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh”; award-winning works like the 1978 war film “The Deer Hunter”; screenplays of popular motion pictures like 1983’s “​​​​​​​Flashdance” and 1993’s “​​​​​​​Striking Distance”​​​​​​​; and long-lost 19th-century dime novels, children’s and young adult works, scripts of plays and television series, and obscure and self-published titles.

The searchable bibliography organizes content using keywords, genres and place settings, and includes the abstracts and notes by the editor for each entry. Places are nested in each entry by county, municipality, neighborhood, sub-neighborhood and landmark, according to locations in the title. A unique feature of the bibliography is the interactive map that accompanies it. The map consists of two layers of zones. One is the Pittsburgh neighborhood layer, which outlines all neighborhoods within Pittsburgh as regions or zones. An additional layer outlines all other municipalities in the western half of Pennsylvania. Clicking on a region in the map provides a list of titles associated with that region or zone with links to that title in the bibliography.

“This bibliography will support regional scholarship, as academics can now identify and analyze works using multiple subcategories with unprecedented precision, and professors can easily find regional works for their reading lists,” said Peter Oresick’s son and co-editor, Jake Oresick, in the introduction. “However, ‘The Pittsburgh Novel’ is also for library science professionals, book clubs, teachers, students, parents looking for a bedtime story, teenagers looking for a movie to stream, and proud western Pennsylvanians from all 26 counties.”

The bibliography began as a passion project that combined two of Peter Oresick’s loves: Pittsburgh and the literary arts. In the 1970s, he started to create a list of titles with a connection to Pittsburgh and the western half of Pennsylvania. “In 2013, Peter launched the Pittsburgh Novel blog, which included plot summaries, author biographies and a comprehensive list of geographic settings and landmarks for each title,” the introduction said.

As Peter Oresick’s health deteriorated, he recruited his son, also an author, to ensure the project would be published. Around the same time, Steven Herb, then a Penn State librarian and director of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, expressed an interest in bringing the job to Penn State. Upon Peter Oresick’s passing in 2016, Jake Oresick took up the mantle of publishing “The Pittsburgh Novel.” Through discussions with the University Libraries, Jake Oresick and Stephanie Flom (Jake’s mother and Peter’s widow) ultimately decided to publish the project digitally with the Libraries’ Open Publishing unit to make it accessible to a wide audience and provide fun, user-friendly features.

The site also houses supplemental pages discussing the bibliography’s creation, information about the editors, acknowledgements, and forms to report errors and missing information. All records in the bibliography can be exported in a variety of formats.

The University of Pittsburgh Library System will host an event to celebrate the digital publication of “The Pittsburgh Novel,” featuring a demonstration of the elaborate search functions by Jake Oresick and a conversation with several authors whose Pittsburgh-based books are included in the bibliography about the significance of Pittsburgh settings in their work. At a reception following the presentation, participants will be invited to explore the bibliography firsthand at computer kiosks. The event will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, in Archives & Special Collections at the Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh campus in Oakland.

For more information about “The Pittsburgh Novel,” contact Jake Oresick at 412-965-4467 or jake.oresick@gmail.com.

Libraries Open Publishing, Penn State University Libraries’ Open Access imprint, is a unit within the Research Informatics and Publishing department. Libraries Open Publishing provides tools and support for Penn State-affiliated authors and groups to publish full-featured electronic scholarly journals, searchable annotated bibliographies, monographs and topical web portals using a variety of digital platforms. All publications are free to view online and download. Copyright is retained by the individual authors where possible, or by the journals or sponsoring entity. Almost all are licensed for use under a Creative Commons license.

For more information about the program, visit openpublishing.psu.edu or contact the Open Publishing team at openpublishing@psu.edu.