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In: Commons, Digital Library

The complete works of Charles Darwin are now online in one place, appropriately named “Charles Darwin: the Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online.” This one place includes: Darwin’s complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more. This work is related to the “Darwin Correspondence Project,” which includes over has over 5,000 letters online and is working to locate as many letters as possible and to make them all available, and they’ve found around 14,500 already. Locating, collecting, and digitizing all of this material is wonderfulRead More →

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In: archives, Collection Items, Digital Library, objects

The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature has many amazing materials, but I’ve never before seen one quite like A Story of Stops. The book itself is wonderfully illustrated, so wonderfully in fact that I haven’t yet read it. I can’t get over the idea of a “story of stops,” written in 1891 for children. A “story of stops” for children or all ages now could be many things–a story of missed messages and miscommunications (stops in communication, stops in transmission, especially with telegraphs), travel and adventure stories (stops along a train route, or an exploration), and so much more. But a “story of stops”Read More →

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In: archives, Collection Items, Digital Library

The University of Florida has a collection of French Revolutionary pamphlets and a small few have been digitized and are now loading online. The full collection is quite large, and one of the digital collection items is a list of all of the pamphlets. It’s wonderful to see these materials online because having them online allows people to see what they are and to use them. The list of pamphlets is helpful on a basic level, like so many bibliographies and lists of holdings, but being able to see and use materials is exponentially better than only knowing that an archive has an object.Read More →

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In: Caribbean, dloc, newspapers, preservation

The Digital Library Center has been working on getting legal materials online for the Caribbean and from other areas in our collections. Most recently, we’ve added to our law collection with Hansard’s British Parliamentary Debates, which are one of the best sources of the political record for the United Kingdom [1803-1891]. We’re almost done digitizing the 2nd series [1820-1830, 25 volumes] of the Debates, and later projects will digitize the rest provided they’re still in need. The University of Southampton is also working on Parliamentary Publications and related materials. In addition to Hansard’s, the University of Florida Digital Collections includes Florida Law, with publications fromRead More →

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In: Academia, data sets, datamining, interface, visualization

I’m currently at the Center for Literary Studies (CLC) Codework: Exploring relations between creative writing practices and software engineering workshop, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, held at West Virginia University (and it’s April 3-6, 2008 and there’s more on it here). Ted Nelson, coiner of the word hypertext and media studies visionary spoke. Sandy Baldwin opened by introducing Nelson – describing Nelson as a luminary, and having him speak as astronomical – and then describing how Nelson influenced his own English practice and work. Nelson began by explaining his preference for open ended speaking, and then introduced his new book-in-progress “geeks bearing gifts” onRead More →

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In: Collection Items, exhibit

Meridian International center is hosting an exhibition, Jam Session: America’s Jazz Ambassadors Embrace the World, on Thursday, April 3, 2008. The exhibition will feature photographs and documents drawn from archives around the country. The brochure cover image, shown above, includes Dizzy Gillespie’s horn from a Cuban magazine, held at the University of Florida and scanned for especially for Jam Session. Unfortunately, the magazine is under copyright so we couldn’t put it online, but the Jam Session exhibit will be filled with many important items not online, but far too wonderful to miss. The exhibit: chronicles the tours of American jazz legends as they traveled theRead More →

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In: Commons, Digital Library, Library, UF

In August, the Digital Library Center proudly announced breaking the one million page mark, with over a million pages online for more than “20 collections, representing more than 44,000 titles in more than 52,000 volumes.” Now, just 7 months later we’ve added slightly over another 60% of that to the collections for a total of 1,621,841 pages, over 5,1746 titles (up from 44,000) and 67,487 volumes (up from 52,000). That means we’ve been producing almost 10% of our total holdings each month for the past 7 at nearly 100,000 pages a month! The incredible production rate is far more incredible when the types of pagesRead More →

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In: comics, conference, exhibit

The annual University of Florida Comics Conference will be this Friday and Saturday. The conference events will be held at Emerson Alumni Hall (on University Avenue, across from the stadium) and the program is on the conference website and posted below. The keynote speakers are the incredible Phoebe Gloeckner, Gail Simone, and Sally Cruikshank. Friday, March 21st 9-10:15 AM – Panel 1: The “Body” of the Text “‘Time is a Man / Space is a Woman’: Narrative + Visual Pleasure = Gender Confusion,” Aaron Kashtan “Eggs, Birds and ‘an Hour for Lunch’: A Vision of the Grotesque Body in Clyde Fans: Book 1 by Seth,”Read More →

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In: Academia, archives, Digital Library, dloc, Library, open access, preservation

In working on other projects, I stumbled across this poster on the Digital Library of the Caribbean from last year. The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. All materials in dLOC are Open Access for everyone to see, but any rights remain with the owners or with the contributing partners. This is a great example of collaboration creating materials for all to use, while supporting the creators and their communities and nations. The digitized materials include Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections. TheRead More →

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In: archives, Digital Library, preservation, UF

Google is having another design-a-campus contest in SketchUp. It’s the Google 2008 International Model Your Campus Competition! Students around the world can compete by modeling their school’s campus buildings in Google SketchUp, geo-reference them in Google Earth, and submitting them by uploading to the Google 3D Warehouse. Students at higher education institutions almost anywhere in the world can submit individually or in teams of students. In addition to Google’s prices, for those modeling schools in Florida or the Caribbean or circum-Caribbean, please also submit your designs to the University of Florida Digital Collections or the Digital Library of the Caribbean, or your own school’s digitalRead More →