AboutMedievalist/Techie Kay Schlumpf, Project Manager at NSLS, sheds light on news and developments in genealogy, history and digitization. Recent Posts:Categories:Archives:
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Illuminated HeritageMarch 13, 2009 Digital Past Now on TwitterThat’s right! Digital Past is now on Twitter as DigitalPast – be sure to follow us for all the latest updates with the program! posted by Kay at 11:41 am | Comments (0) March 9, 2009 It was a dark and stormy night…How many stories start this way? Quite a few I imagine, especially in the horror genre, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about today! It certainly was dark and stormy over the weekend up by my house which means I pretty much had to amuse myself indoors. As usual, I went out to the barn to ride and train my horse Prince. Fortunately, we have an indoor arena where we do 90% of our work. Unfortunately, the lights weren’t working yesterday. Well, not a biggie, Prince and I have no problems working is a less-than-well-lit ring, it’s not like we have stuff in the way that we might run over, and there are big skylights. The carts are set up against the wall and we have bright orange cones cordoning off the “guest seating” so as long as we can see the walls and the vague shapes of carts and cones, we’re pretty good (we eat a lot of carrots, Prince and I). However, about halfway through our ride, just after noon, the thunderstorms rolled in. There wasn’t much lightening, which is good, because that would mean I would have had to get off and give up for the day, but there was some nice booms and well, the skylights kept getting darker and darker. So, here I am, riding a horse around in the semi-dark (the lights from the barn area were helping) during a thunderstorm, and yes, the ceiling was dripping and little puddles were forming here and there. Prince, being the level-headed horse he is, only jumped once – at the first clap of thunder. He was a bit wound after that, but kept himself calm. A lot of that came from the fact that he trusts me to save him from the monsters but then I had to trust him too – a) not to be an idiot and b) to watch for the puddles so he didn’t slip much (his eyesight, is, after all better than mine). We cut the ride short because of the conditions, but after I got off, it made me start thinking…(yes, we’re getting to the point) I started thinking about my ancestors, all these people hanging out on my family tree. They didn’t have a safe sandy arena to be riding their horses around in during a rainstorm – they were out there IN the rain storm. Horse was getting them from point A to point B – not learning how to do side passes or pivots or the Spanish Walk. No lights from the barn helping to light the way, reins slippery and wet with the rain, and spooky horse-eating shadows everywhere. They couldn’t see much either and they didn’t have nice soft sand underfoot – they had bumpy ground and tree roots and big puddles the size of small lakes. They too had to trust their horse to get them to their destination safely and I’m sure they did it and didn’t even think that much about it. And then I started thinking about all the stories like that I would have loved to hear handed down from the ages. I have some – like a great grandfather several branches back who died when his wagon tipped over on the way home back from town. I remember hearing that story (and, actually, reading the newspaper story) and wondering what the heck was going on that a wagon tipped over? And yesterday, I got some perspective on that story – I don’t remember if it was raining or anything, but gees, a tree root sticking up in the wrong place, getting slightly off the path, who knows – it all would have been so easy to tip a wagon – even a sturdy farm wagon – even with level-headed horses. So, there are 2 things I wanted to leave you to think about today:
posted by Kay at 12:13 pm | Comments (1) March 6, 2009 New Collection on Digital Past – American Association of Nurse AnesthetistsYes, that’s right! Today we celebrate the birth of a new collection on Digital Past! Yeay! The American Association of Nurse Anesthetists History Collection explores the history of the AANA and the nurse anesthesia profession in the United States with materials from the AANA Archives. There are some OLD photos in here, folks, I saw some from the 1910’s when I was browsing through, like this one of a group of NA’s at Saint Mary’s Hospital and this one from World War I, about 1915. Very cool! Imagine how great this will be for students of the medical profession, nursing, surgery, anesthesia, not to mention genealogists – lots of portraits and people pictures. And even though I will probably never be able to pronounce “anesthetists,” I welcome the AANA most heartily to the Digital Past family! Welcome aboard! posted by Kay at 11:57 am | Comments (1) March 2, 2009 Digital Past UpdatesFinally a few minutes to stop and let everyone know what’s coming up with Digital Past in the very near term! We’ll be rolling out a fantastic new site and I hope you’ll all stop by and reacquaint yourself with it. If you are a Digital Past participant and have not subscribed to the digitize listserv, I’d strongly recommend it as that’s how you’ll find out about what you need to know as we undergo this transition. First, we’ll be moving to CONTENTdm version 5.0 which was just released late last Fall. NSLS staff and a handful of beta testers have been doing all they can to find the bugs and get them fixed. With the new version comes a completely rewritten – from the ground up – Project Client (previously known as Acquisition Station), faceted searching, the WorldCat search engine, full UNICODE compliance, better handling of pdfs, and other new features. Second, the site will look completely and I mean, completely, different. We’re in the final stages of firming up the new design with the web designer. Third, functionality will be vastly improved and highly interactive. NSLS staff have been busy building a slew of very cool applications for our users. Among these are:
And, in case anyone is keeping count out there, as of today we have 135,865 images in Digital Past that belong to 40+ institutions. We also have several new institutions that have joined but are waiting for “the Big Switch” to start adding items to the database. So, stay tuned! Timetable soon!! posted by Kay at 2:03 pm | Comments (0) Digital Past on FlickrWow, it’s been a while…and I don’t think I ever wrote about this, but Digital Past has been on Flickr for a while! We’re working with our participants to upload selected image to our Flickr group in hopes that they will find them of interest and want to see more! By far the most popular image is from Camp Hood TX – a T1-60 Ton Tank. Why? I have no idea. Far far behind are the following:
Where is the love for my very favorite card? I trust my horse, Prince, but not THAT far, and ok, he’s not a jumper anyway. Or the love for those hilarious comical cards by Ray Walters that my Great Aunt Ethel (who we’ve mentioned here before) used to collect? When she passed away we had multiples upon multiples of these things – wish I knew where they’d all got to, but alas I don’t. I have a few and for that I should be thankful! Great memories – all of ‘em! If they spur some great memories for you – perhaps you’ll leave a comment and share the love! We’ve only just started with a few images but after the “Big Switch” coming up for Digital Past, I hope to work with some more of our participants to add some of their goodies to the collection! Currently we have samples from Fort Sheridan, World War II, Detroit Publishing Cards (scenics), Funny Cards (see above), and the Century of Progress. Also if you have your own Flickr account and have cool photos you’d think would fit in well with Digital Past, we have a Digital Past photo group that you can add your photos to! So get those scanners churning and add some goodies to the group! posted by Kay at 11:44 am | Comments (0) August 4, 2008 Blockbuster Offers Movie DigitizationWell, 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 DigitizeToday 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:
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 NewsIt’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:
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 OnlineThe 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) Next Page »
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