MetaFilter posts tagged with digitization

Treasures unburied

Horace Rumpole — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:42:30 -0800

Libraries' Surprising Special Collections. Since Smithsonian apparently doesn't quite get how the internet works, I've rounded up the web pages for these collections: Griswold Chess Collection, Cleveland Public Library. Fore-edge paintings, Boston Public Library (my favorite) Arabic Papyrus, Parchment, and Paper, University of Utah. (Try the "browse" drop-down menu.) Tober Forgery Collection, University of Delaware. Nurse Romance Novel Covers, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. (Awesome!) Arents Collection on Tobacco, New York Public Library. (Click on "Collection contents, then "Tobacco, its History and Associations") Severson Collection of WWI Avaiation, Saint Paul Public Library. (Nothing here, unfortunately.) Judaica Sound Archive, Florida Atlantic University.

Wiring the Castle

Miko — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:09:16 -0800

Circuits are flipping on in the nation's attic. A couple of weeks ago, 31 "digerati" -- like Clay Shirky, Chris Anderson, and George Oates -- dropped in to the Smithsonian Institution for the invitation-only conference "Smithsonian 2.0: A Gathering to Re-imagine the Smithsonian in the Digital Age". Dan Cohen of the Center for History and New Media provides a great summary (and continues to pose provocative questions) on his own blog. Those whose invitations were somehow lost in the mail can play fly-on-the-wall by watching the keynotes, paging through the Flickr pool of envymaking glimpses of their behind-the-scenes lab and collections tours, reading the blog (where Bruce Wyman of the Denver Art Museum lays out a succinct road map for museums using social media), and poking around in the SI's website gallery. Want to cheer on the USA's favorite 163-year-old "Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge" without taking the trip to DC? Thanks to their recent efforts, you can now follow the SI on Twitter, listen to its podcasts, watch its YouTube channel, visit the Latino Virtual Museum in Second Life, or use the FaceBook gifts page to send your best friends their very own pair of Dorothy's ruby slippers, Hope diamond, Negro Leagues baseball, or coelocanth.

Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800

Knappster — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:41:18 -0800

Fire destroyed the office of the War Department and all its files in 1800, and for decades historians believed that the collection, and the window it provided into the workings of the early federal government, was lost forever. Thanks to a decade-long effort to retrieve copies of the files scattered in archives across the country, the collection has been reconstituted and is offered here as a fully-searchable digital database.

The Genealogical Revolution Will Be Digitized

Knappster — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:37:11 -0800

For decades, the LDS church microfilmed old records of genealogical interest and stashed them in the Granite Mountain Record Vault for safekeeping. Copies could be ordered and viewed at local Family History Centers. Now, through massive digitization and volunteer indexing efforts, those records are starting to come online. It was once thought that it would take 120 years to scan the 2 million+ microfilm rolls housed in the vault, but by 2006 it was estimated that "much" of the collection would be digitized in "as little as 10 years" (some technical details here and here (both PDF)). A double-blind volunteer indexing project was launched, with 140,000 people signing up by May 2008. The fruits of their labor may be seen (and searched) on the FamilySearch Record Search pilot site. Partnerships with commercial companies and archives large and small will add to the collection records freshly digitized from the source, some of which may be indexed online but free to view only at Family History Centers and the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. The resources collected by the Mormons are available to genealogists of all faiths. There is no proselytizing at the Family History Centers, though church members will answer questions about Mormonism if asked. The Mormons' interest in genealogy stems from their belief in baptizing the dead by proxy—a practice disturbing to some people of other faiths. The LDS church has been criticized for baptizing Holocaust victims, and the Vatican recently directed Catholic dioceses not to allow Mormons access to parish registers. Mormons counter that the dead are only offered the option of baptism, and are permitted to decline.

Open Content Alliance Digitizes Library Collections

richards1052 — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:05:21 -0800

The Open Content Alliance poses a threat to Google and Microsoft's competing library digitization projects. OCA was founded by the Internet Archive, whose main claim to fame is the Wayback Machine, designed to archive the internet's web history. OCA's mission is to open the nation's library collections to universal web search by digitizing books and making them as widely accessible as possible. A number of major library systems, including the Boston Public Library and Smithsonian, have refused to sign up with competing ventures by Microsoft and Google because they do not provide for universal access to digitized books. These commercial ventures prohibit books being accessed by competing search engines. So far, 80 libraries and research institutions have signed on with Open Content Alliance. They must pay for the scanning of their books while Google and Microsoft offset that cost for their participating institutions. See also Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web

Because digital pages don't turn yellow.

me3dia — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 12:35:57 -0800

The National Endowment for the Arts and the Library of Congress are putting 30 million newspaper pages online. The National Digital Newspaper Program "will create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all the states and U.S. territories published between 1836 and 1922." The goal is to have it done in 20 years; the LOC has a sample up now: The Stars and Stripes from 1918-1919.

World Heritage Digitzation projects

stbalbach — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 13:09:09 -0800

Ben Kacyras is the inventor of the portable Cyrax 3D scanning camera traditionally used by surveyors for quickly creating "surgical exact" 3D models of large structures. Ben has set a goal to scan every World Heritage Site on Earth and make it available online so that if anything were to happen to a site, an exact replica could be re-built. Example Cyrax pictures. More 3D Camera links and other World Heritage Digitization efforts.

Digital Collections at the Ewell Sale Stewart Library

misteraitch — Thu, 26 Jun 2003 04:30:11 -0800

Digital Collections at the Ewell Sale Stewart Library: including A Delight for the Eye and the Mind, 'books on molluscs and their shells'; The Remarkable Nature of Edward Lear (Natural History illustrations by the famous 'nonsense poet'); Nature's Great Masterpiece: The Elephant; Foul and Loathsome Creatures (‘Illustrated Herpetological Books’); and Drawn from the Deep (‘The Fish in Science, Art and the Imagination’).

sandor — Wed, 23 Feb 2000 11:16:17 -0800

Apparently, the digitization of all words ever spoken by human beings would take up 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Or, 5 exabytes. How long will it be before my laptop has that much space?