This is from the University of Florida Health Science Center Libraries: In celebration of Black History Month, the HSC Library has created an album of ‘Historical Photos of African Americans in the Health Science Center.’ The photos are courtesy of the UF Digital Collections. The album is online, on the UF Health Science Center Libraries Facebook page and this is the direct link to the album.Read More →

The Florida Digital Newspaper Library has grown enormously in the past year, adding 384,238 pages since July 1 for a grand total of 504,773 pages! Those many pages capture history in the making, including  New Year’s Day across the years and across Florida. Front-page news covers the then-current events, often including a New Year’s baby. For more news of the day, see the Florida Digital Newspaper Library, supported by the Smathers Libraries, which exists to provide free access to the news and history of Florida. The Florida Digital Newspaper Library ensures long-term digital preservation of Florida’s news, making the news available to everyone over theRead More →

These two news items from the Florida History Collections at the University of Florida Libraries: Cecilia L. Johnson Library Grant for Visiting Graduate Scholars The Cecilia L. Johnson grant provides funds for out-of-state researchers who wish to come to the University of Florida to work in the UF Libraries’ Florida history collections. Application is open to all graduate students at higher institutions of learning. Awards are for $1000. Researchers are required to spend at least one week (five working days) on the University of Florida campus making use of materials in the George A. Smathers Libraries. Preference will be given to students who are currentlyRead More →

I’ve stolen the title of this post from Shawn Rider’s article “Why Nintendo Gets It” because the title explains the whole point of this post and because of the parallels between Google and Nintendo. Nintendo gets it because they understand that games are about playability more so than technological innovation and because they understand that innovation can be  evolutionary or sustaining as well as disruptive. Evolutionary or sustaining innovations build incrementally on existing structures, but disruptive innovation changes the whole landscape. The 8-bit NES to the Super Nintendo was an evolutionary or sustaining innovation, largely technological, but that technology enabled longer and deeper games. TheRead More →

The Florida Humanities Council has funded a project by the University of West Florida (and involving the University of South Florida and the University of Florida according to the The Gainesville Sun article) to create podcasts about historic Florida. The project will create these “Pastcasts” (I love the name!) for historic Florida towns and the programs will be available for download from the Florida Humanities Council website. I’m excited to hear all of the programs, but most excited to hear the Pastcasts for Alachua County, and to hear the rest with an eye on ways to connect them to the photos, maps, and other materialsRead More →