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In: cfp, Collection Items, conference, Library

Collection Development/Resource Sharing (CDRS) Conference, March 26-27, 2009 Florida State University Alumni Center; Tallahassee, Florida Information about the CDRS conference is available online and below. Call for Proposals Florida State University and the Panhandle Library Access Network (PLAN) are co-sponsoring a two day event that is based on the Janus Challenges. The Steering Committee for the Collection Development/Resources Sharing Conference is accepting presentation proposals that address some aspect of the Janus Challenges.  Presentations may demonstrate projects that have been successfully implemented at a local level and have the potential to scale to multi-institutional and/or multi-type groups, or propose innovative new approaches to collection development practicesRead More →

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In: Collection Items, comics, newspapers, political cartoons

Antonio Prohías is best known for creating MAD Magazine‘s Spy vs. Spy. Spy vs. Spy is immediately recognizable by any age group because of its amazing minimalist yet non-reductive portrayal of political conflict. It should come as no surprise that its creator Antonio Prohías honed his skills inking political cartoons for newspapers like El Avance Criollo. We found these cartoons thanks to Will Canova, the Digital Library Center’s newspaper digitization coordinator. Will was processing El Avance Criollo and, noticing the incredibly well styled political cartoons, quickly noted that these cartoons were done by none other than Spy vs. Spy’s creator Antonio Prohías. The University ofRead More →

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In: Collection Items, context, digitalcollections, UF, UFDC

I haven’t been blogging as much lately, but it’s not because I don’t have much to share. The adage “still waters run deep” seems fitting for the University of Florida Digital Collections of late. In recent months, we’ve upgraded our infrastructure repeatedly and we continue to make progress on working through our digitized-yet-unprocessed materials and in working through the files in need of migration. One collection’s history perhaps speaks best to our current and ongoing efforts, as our Digital Library Center Director explained in 2000: “The Governor’s gift enables the creation and delivery of electronic library resources via the Internet in support of the UniversityRead More →

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In: archives, Collection Items, Digital Library, digitalcollections, dloc, flickr, newspapers, preservation, seo, statistics, UF, UFDC

I’ve been so busy the past year (or 14 months to be completely accurate) since joining UF’s Digital Library Center that it’s hard to see what all we’ve accomplished. The time has flown by with loads of wonderful work, and wonderful progress. I decided to review some of our documentation and to note a few of the highlights: More stuff! We hit the 1 million page mark in September 2007, and as of today we’re at 2.12 million with so many more to load! More types of stuff! Improvements to UFDC that include support for audio and video files, better multi-language support! Better ways toRead More →

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In: access, Collection Items, deep web, digital collections, findability, rss, seo

In our ongoing work to improve the findability of books in the UF Digital Collections (UFDC), we now have an RSS page with feeds for each of the collections. The RSS feed page is http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc2/rss/. Please sign up for a feed or two to learn about the great materials added daily, and please share the RSS feeds with others!Read More →

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In: Collection Items, comics

The press release is below, and this is great news for the many growing comics programs across the country. as we edge ever closer to critical mass for full, mainstream recognition of the importance of comics studies and collections. —– The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), Syracuse University Library has been awarded a grant of $79,440 by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to support the arrangement and description of the library’s 134 unprocessed collections of original cartoon art. The funds will help support a full-time project archivist for a period of two years. The award to Syracuse was one of six “Detailed ProcessingRead More →

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In: access, Caribbean, Collection Items, newspapers, preservation

The University of Florida supports the Florida Digital Newspaper Library and the Caribbean Newspaper Imaging Project. By preserving and digitizing the news of the past, these projects make the news new again. The Caribbean Newspaper Imaging Project includes papers like Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste, with issues from 1899 – 1902 now online. While the early issues online are imperfect (because of materials and processing with newspaper paper, microfilming, and then digitizing from microfilm) the pages are easily readable. If I could read Haitian Creole, or at least enough French to understand with savvy use of Google’s translator, I’d be able to read the December 30, 1899Read More →

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In: Collection Items, digital collections, Digital Library, UFDC

Finger Plays for Nursery and Kindergarten by Emilie Poulsson is a playbook of sorts, with technical writing style guides for finger plays. As wonderfully silly as this image is, the purpose of Finger Plays as explained in the “Preface” is even more wonderful: “WHAT the child imitates,” says Froebel, “he begins to understand. Let him represent the flying of birds and he enters partially into the life of birds. Let him imitate the rapid motion of fishes in the water and his sympathy with fishes is quickened. Let him reproduce the activities of farmer, miller and baker, and his eyes open to the meaning ofRead More →

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In: Collection Items, datamining, Digital Library, statistics

The University of Florida Digital Collections are still relatively young, established separately only recently. Since March 23 of this year, we’ve added another 100,000 pages, up from 1.62 million on March 23 and now we’re at 1.718 million (and counting) and it’s only April 20. The full stats–as of today–are: 53,682 titles; 70,323 items; and 1,718,050 pages. Our statistics are dynamically updated, listed online here, and the statistics are broken down by collection. The statistics are a handy gauge of how our collections are developing, but they can’t reflect the quality of materials online. For reflecting a more complete sense of the materials online, newRead 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 →