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 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) 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) July 11, 2007 Audio Descriptions and Digital PastI’m sure that those of you who have received LSTA grants for digitization lately know that they are starting to require a small group of your items to have audio descriptions. Several Digital Past people and myself attended the seminar on audio descriptions held here at NSLS earlier this year but for those who didn’t and would like to more, I will refer you to the Audio Description Illinois site from the Alliance Library System who is spearheading the effort. Be sure to check out some of the nice Best Practice sites, like the one about Ronald Reagan. So, naturally, that means that we have to find a place to put the written text and the audio mp3 links in our metadata structure for Digital Past. After a lot of thinking, I think it makes sense to put both in the description field. They ARE descriptions after all and they will be towards the top of the page so people don’t have to go too far to find them. The extensive text descriptions will certainly enhance the rest of that which you have. And if you just put in the audio mp3 as a link like: http://www.link.com, CDM will automatically make it a link. The link should be headed with “Audio Description:” so screen readers can pick that up easily. You can then put the mp3 on your server or wherever. I still have to figure out where/how to load them on our server, but I should have that information for you soon… Anyone think a different field would be better? posted by Kay at 2:24 pm | Comments (0) June 19, 2007 Digital Past in Everton’s Genealogical Helper!Yup! That’s right, while browsing the shelves at Borders this weekend, I found Everton’s Genealogical Helper May/June issue with an article about the best US digital image sites and Digital Past was included! Yeay! It’s a nice overview of the project and features a screenshot of the home page. It was a fantastic surprise! So, go check it out yourselves, it’s on page 72. You’ll notice the addition of their award on the front page of Digital Past as well. posted by Kay at 1:19 pm | Comments (0) May 18, 2007 Veterans History ProjectThe Library of Congress has released a new Field Kit for those who would like to participate in the Veterans History Project. I know many are already involved but if you are not and wish to be, this would be a great stepping off point for you. Remember, interviews (whether audio, video or transcriptions of such) are welcome on Digital Past, as are supporting documents/images. posted by Kay at 9:30 am | Comments (0) May 7, 2007 New Exhibit at Digital PastWe have a new exhibit at Digital Past from the Cook Memorial Public Library District! Their exhibit Libertyville In The Twenties showcases a decade of history from our town. Our schools, churches, and businesses from the 1920s are highlighted, as well as local personalities, crime, entertainment and other facets of village life. Check it out, have a walk down memory lane, or, uh, curiousity lane or something! posted by Kay at 1:47 pm | Comments (0) January 8, 2007 Digital Past TV SpotFor those of you who haven’t seen it yet, we now have our very own Digital Past commercial which runs on the Library Cable Network and maybe other places, I’m not sure. It features some of the collections of our participants and explains briefly what it is and all. We have it up on YouTube (linked above). Please feel free to use it wherever you think it might be appropriate – your library/museum, at presentations, marketing events, etc. If you have any comments about it, please be sure to drop me a line! posted by Kay at 11:17 am | Comments (0) Next Page »
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