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Illuminated Heritage

August 4, 2008

Blockbuster Offers Movie Digitization

Well, it had to come around eventually! Blockbuster has teamed up with Home Movie Depot in 44 stores across the Midwest. Home Movie Depot will convert old home movies to DVD. Conversion can be done for 8 mm, Super 8 mm and 16 mm film and camcorder and VHS tapes. Also, they will do photo film or slides into a digital format as well. Output formats include streaming videos, DVDs and digital tapes. Periodically I get questions about where to get movies converted and, well, here’s one answer! Click for the full article.

posted by Kay at 8:28 am | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

A Reason to Digitize

Today the horrific news that the Swan’s Island Library near Bangor, Maine burned to the ground after being struck by lightening.  It was a small library, about 10,000 books, but also housed a lot of the local history collections for the community. Items that were lost included:

Photographs, letters, journals, toys and even hand-carved lobster claw pegs were among the items in the collection, she said. Much of it had been kept until recently in Seaside Hall, a local recreational hall built in 1905 for plays and dances, according to the town Web site, www.swansisland.org. The hall was sold last year, and since then many of the historical items had been moved into the library, according to Bailey.

Some artifacts, such as old photo albums and letters, had been moved into the library within the past few weeks, she said.

I don’t know about you, but that gets me a bit concerned. What’s your disaster plan for your library and, especially, your local history archives or even, what’s your disaster plan for your own personal treasure troves? Have you considered digitization? In this case, if they have anything digitized, they at least have most of the content so it’s not a complete and total loss. Maybe it’s time your institution joined Digital Past and made digitization a priority? Think about it and then give me a call and we’ll talk…

posted by Kay at 1:16 pm | Comments (0)

June 2, 2008

Digital Past News

It’s been a long time since I last wrote here and I do apologize! However, I have some great news concerning Digital Past! We’ve seen a lot of growth lately with the following new participants:

• Chicago Botanic Garden - Lenhardt Library
• Morton Arboretum - Sterling Morton Library
• Chicago Zoological Society - Brookfield Zoo
• William Rainey Harper College

We have also seen several institutions that have been around for quite a while renewing their efforts, which is fantastic! There are also several new institutions considering their own digitization projects with Digital Past.

We are also building up (not so slowly) to the 100,000 item mark in Digital Past! As of today, we’re just over 92, 300.

Last week Digital Past was featured in the ALA (American Library Association) e-newsletter as their Digital Library of the Week.

Stay tuned for more Digital Past excitement!

posted by Kay at 11:31 am | Comments (0)

March 18, 2008

79,000+ Newspaper Pages Online

The Library of Congress has recently added over 79,000 pages of newspapers to their nearly half a million already up at Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers site. It represents 61 newspapers ranging from 1900-1910.

posted by Kay at 3:09 pm | Comments (0)

March 3, 2008

Robins! I want to see Robins!

I just ran across a very cool digitization site and for those who are as desperate to see Spring’s Herald, the Robin, as I am it gives hope! The University of Pittsburgh has put up the entire set of Audubon’s Birds of America, along with his Ornithological Biography. The plates are gorgeous and it’s very easy to search. Enjoy the art and THINK SPRING!

posted by Kay at 3:47 pm | Comments (0)

January 17, 2008

Library of Congress on Flickr

That’s right - the Library of Congress has put about 3000 images on Flickr and they are asking the general public to tag them From the few I looked at, it looks like it’s been a popular pasttime! Of course, they have no known copyright restrictions so go for it! Very cool…

posted by Kay at 11:35 am | Comments (1)

December 6, 2007

Amazing Dino Find

In case you haven’t heard, they’re researching a “mummified” dinosaur found by a 17-year old out in North Dakota. “Dakota” is a hadrosaur, a plant-eater preyed on by T-Rex, and not an uncommon find. However, it is shaping up to be the most complete dinosaur ever found. They found fossilized skin covered in scales and evidence of stripes. They are also discovering hadrosaurs were much more muscular than previously thought, walked low to the ground and could run up to 45 mph. This is an amazing find and if you’re at all interested in paleontology or have kids who are, you should hop over and read up on it: http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/1479288 There are numerous stories out on it now, so I’m sure a standard web search will bring up even more information.

posted by Kay at 8:13 am | Comments (0)

November 15, 2007

Updated Copyright Term Map

There is an updated “Copyright Term and the Public Domain” map on the Cornell site. It includes audio-visual materials and sound recordings now. Necessary reference for anyone involved in digitization….

posted by Kay at 11:00 am | Comments (0)

November 5, 2007

FamilySearch Indexing Project

Last week the Genealogy & Local History Networking Group had the Family History Center coordinator for the 7-state area out to talk about what was going on with FamilySearch, the FHCs, etc. Part of the presentation was about FamilySearch Indexing which is a project YOU can become involved in. They are looking for volunteers to help index/transcribe all sorts of genealogical data including censuses (censi?), birth, marriage, and death records from all over the world. Everything is done online from their site and through the software provided AND in small (half hour or so) batches. I thought this sounded like fun so I signed up last week.

After the initial read-through/click-through training provided on the site and downloading the software, I grabbed my first batch of records. I was trying to get some records from Germany, but that didn’t work so I hit the button that gave me whatever they thought was most important to get indexed at the time. I ended up with the Minnesota census, which was fine, I grew up in a town founded by the Swedish so I can read Johnson and Jorgeson just as well as the next person. I didn’t even get a full page - just 27 lines! However, as it was my first and I was getting used to the handwriting, it did take me more than half an hour, but not more than an hour. I’m sure as I do more I will get used to the handwriting.

The process is very cool though - it highlights each of the fields on the original so you know where you are and what you are entering in your table. It also tries to save your typing as much as possible giving you the option of choosing what you just typed in the field above. For example, if you’re doing a family and the parents were both born in Germany, it auto-selects Germany for you until you tell it something else. Very easy and really rather fun. There’s also the whole “hey, maybe I’ll run across one of MY relatives” treasure-hunt mentality and the feel-good aspect of knowing you’re helping someone else out.

Anyway, give it a try - if you’re anything like me you’ll find it a challenging, fun and rewarding experience!

posted by Kay at 1:14 pm | Comments (0)

October 16, 2007

Ancestry Press Update

As promised, I found out the pricing for the printed bound heritage books you can make at Ancestry Press. A 24-page 8.5×11 book is $29.95 and each additional page costs 39 cents. Comparing that to Shutterfly, where I got my pet photo book, it’s a little cheaper, especially if you add pages and it’s a bit more space, since it’s a larger paper size. Mine was 8×8 inches, $29.95 for 20 pages and $1 per additional page. Of course, it’s not really apples and apples, since Ancestry Press is geared toward genealogists or family historians so it wouldn’t really work for my pet photo book!

posted by Kay at 10:03 am | Comments (0)

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