{"id":7408,"date":"2013-03-21T14:59:49","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T19:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/?p=7408"},"modified":"2013-03-21T14:59:49","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T19:59:49","slug":"digital-library-digest-march-21-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/2013\/03\/21\/digital-library-digest-march-21-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Library Digest: March 21, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers at University of South Florida \u00a0St. Petersburg are working to digitize a treasure trove of Spanish documents that shed light on Florida\u2019s past in St. Augustine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It is quiet in the archives, the silence broken only by the delicate crinkle of 400-year-old pages of parchment, the soft click of a digital camera, the occasional creak of an office chair.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Saber Gray sits at a table sorting the fragile, lacy pages by year and category \u2014 births, baptisms, marriages, deaths. She wears white cotton gloves to protect the pages and peers closely at each one as she goes. At a nearby table Arthur Tarratus methodically places one document after another into a box and photographs each page. Then he places one atop another with white-gloved hands until the stack reaches nearly a foot tall. And so it goes throughout the day, page after page.<\/p>\n

\u201cTedious,\u201d he says with a frown.<\/p>\n

“Gray and Tarratus are USF St. Petersburg graduate students in Florida Studies, working under the supervision of J. Michael Francis, the Hough Family Endowed Chair in Florida Studies, who sits at another table pondering a bound volume of documents from the late 1700s. The slow, deliberate nature of the work obscures their race against time.<\/p>\n

“Every day that passes is another day closer to the inevitable destruction of these priceless pages. Each document is encased in plastic from a 1939 preservation effort that protected the documents but also is slowly destroying each page, written with quill pen and dating back to 1594. A distinct smell of ammonia wafts from each box of documents as it is opened, the scent of dead bugs and ancient ink interacting with plastic.<\/p>\n

“They are spending this Saturday in the Historical Archives of the Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine at the Convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph\u2019s in the heart of the city\u2019s historic district. They are working with the Diocese to digitize the documents and put them online. The goal is to preserve them and make them accessible to scholars and the general public around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the earliest written documents from any region in the United States,\u201d says Francis, one of the nation\u2019s leading experts in the Spanish Colonial experience in the land Ponce de Leon named La Florida. The documents predate the Mayflower and the founding of Jamestown and are older than any documents created in the U.S. about the U.S. in the National Archives or the Library of Congress, he says. Each page is a loose thread in the history of St. Augustine, the nation\u2019s oldest continuously occupied European city.”<\/p>\n

From Tom\u00a0Scherberger’s article for<\/em> USF Magazine, Preserving Florida’s History<\/a><\/p>\n

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art puts 20,000 high resolution images into the public domain<\/strong><\/p>\n

“The Los Angeles County Museum of art\u00a0said on their Tumblr on Friday<\/a>\u00a0\u201cDear Tumblr-verse, Merry Christmas: we just gave you 20,000 high-resolution images, for free. Now we have just one question: what are you going to do with them?\u201d This announcement is a next step in LACMA\u2019s ongoing experiment to open up more of their collections to the public, via the public domain. They have\u00a0more discussion and explanation on their WordPress blog<\/a>. Do any search on their\u00a0new collections website<\/a>\u00a0and you can\u00a0limit your search to only those with unrestricted images<\/a>. And then you can take those images and do\u2026 whatever you want. There is still\u00a0a wordy Terms of Use page<\/a>\u00a0that people may want to dig through but the upshot is that folks should go use these photos, for anything. Stick them in Wikipedia, use them on your flyers and blog posts, use them for your album covers, put them on a t-shirt. Thanks for trusting the public, LACMA. Lovely stuff. Here\u2019s the pull quote from their website that sums up why they did this.<\/p>\n

“Why would a museum give away images of its art? As Michael Govan often says, it\u2019s because our mission is to care for and share those works of art with the broadest possible public. The logical, radical extension of that is to open up our treasure trove of images. When we first launched our early experiment with giving images away online, we heard a resoundingly positive response from many quarters: school teachers, parents, graduate students, journalists and the occasional creative person interested in printing their own Mother\u2019s Day cards. So far, we have yet to hear of a situation where one of our public domain artworks has been misused or abused.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Jessamyn West’s post on her blog<\/em> Librarian.net, LACMA launches new collection site with 20k public domain images<\/a><\/p>\n

Public art display, “Filament Mind,” at the Teton County Library in Wyoming is a data-driven installation representing the connection between Dewey Decimal subject and subject title<\/strong><\/p>\n

“This January, hundreds of people attended the grand opening of an addition to the\u00a0Teton County Library<\/a>\u00a0in Jackson Hole, WY. The big draw was \u201cFilament Mind,\u201d a stunning digital art installation utilizing more than five miles of fiber-optic cables, cut into 1,000 pieces, and 44 LED illuminators.<\/p>\n

“But \u201cFilament Mind\u201d is more than colorful eye candy adorning the upper walls of the lobby. This dynamic artwork is data-driven. Each piece of cable represents a different Dewey Decimal subject and leads to its corresponding subject title. Whenever a visitor to any public library in Wyoming performs a computer search of the library catalog, the cable and category are illuminated by a color and light display.<\/p>\n

“At a glance, library patrons and staff can see what the hot topics are at that moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic art is really important, because we are a public space and public art conveys a sense of the times,\u201d said Deb Adams, library director, Teton County Library. \u201cIt\u2019s like a one-way recording of the cultural and historic aspects of a particular place and time.\u201d<\/p>\n

“The library didn\u2019t specify digital art when it put out a national call for proposals, but Adams said \u201cFilament Mind,\u201d the design submitted by Brian W. Brush and Yong Ju Lee of E\/B Office in New York, best represented the criteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were looking for artwork that was going to be intellectually challenging, thought-provoking, would invite various levels of understanding, and would suggest that you discover something new every time you visit the library,\u201d Adams said.”<\/p>\n

From Shari Held’s article for<\/em> Library Journal, Libraries Open Doors, Data to Digital Art Displays<\/a><\/p>\n

Eight public and academic libraries in Maine join together to form print arching project, “Maine Shared Collections Strategy”<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Eight of Maine\u2019s largest libraries, both public and academic, are about halfway through a major and distinctive project for the shared management and archiving of their print collections and the integration of digital editions into a statewide catalog.<\/p>\n

“The drivers of the\u00a0Maine Shared Collections Strategy<\/a>\u00a0(MSCS)\u2014lack of available space, budget cuts, low usage per cost and availability of electronic resources\u2014are common throughout the library world. The recent\u00a0Print Archive Network meeting<\/a>\u00a0held at ALA Midwinter Conference in Seattle highlighted the growing number of\u00a0shared print projects<\/a>\u00a0being established throughout North America.<\/p>\n

“Nevertheless, MSCS has some distinguishing characteristics, according to those involved in the project:<\/p>\n