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In: design, Digital Library, interface, Library

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an post about libraries in the digital age. The post notes that digitization projects often lead to a patchwork of online materials that aren’t available within an integrated interface. This is certainly true for the time being, but steps toward integration can be seen in the WorldCat’s full catalog listings for so many different libraries and from corporations as they attempt to catalog or at least extract catalog-style metadata from information sources. For instance, Microsoft Live Labs’ pages have a note on their work on entity abstraction and the image of it is listed here. I started noticing theRead More →

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In: design, Digital Library, exhibit, gis, Library, UF

While the map linked from this slideshow isn’t actually accurate because nearly all of the images are from the University of Florida’s original Library, Smathers East, and I spread them out for easier viewing, the map does accurately show why there’s reason to be excited because Picasa has improved once again. Not only can the images in Picasa be mapped, the images now show as small icons of the images instead of the generic picture icon, and the individual images can be clicked on and enlarged and they can be played in a slide-show format across the map. The slideshow with the map is aRead More →

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In: Academia, design, Digital Library, interface, Library

This is the mindmap I made for the Baldwin Digital Library Project using Mind42, which is a new online mindmapping service. Mind42 is free and allows for collaboration, so it’s a nice service for many uses. However, I’m hoping to find something that will display the nodes in motion (like the Visual Thesaurus but I’m not looking for the search/query functionality). I want the motion purely for visual interest, but I’m having trouble finding something free and easy for use in creating the visual-motion mindmap. I’m guessing a simple Flash animation would be best for my needs, but I’d appreciate any recommendations for something thatRead More →

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In: Digital Library, geocaching, gis, Library

The Spatial Information Services Unit of the George A. Smathers Libraries is hosting UF’s inaugural GIS Day on Wednesday, November 14, 2007 from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. This all day event will showcase the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to the academic community and the public. The event will include guest speakers from UF’s Geomatics Department and the Geoplan Center as well as interactive geocaching opportunities. It will be an opportunity to meet with professional and expert users of GIS technology. Lectures and poster sessions are open to the public and unrestricted. No registration fee required for any session or activity. Registration isRead More →

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In: Collection Items, comics, Digital Library, exhibit, imagetext, Library

In working on some of the comics materials here and setting up the Alice exhibit, I was looking at other online exhibits and kept stumbling across online comics exhibits. Each of these are different in terms of material covered and scope, but together these are absolutely fantastic for comics research. The exhibits I’ve found so far (in random order) are: The Yale Library exhibit collection on comics, with the collection group titled the Illustrated Word Library of Congress’ exhibit on Blondie and UF’s exhibit on Blondie UF Exhibit on Superhero Comics Early Comic Strips at Duke Several from San Diego State University including work byRead More →

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In: Collection Items, comics, Digital Library, exhibit, Library, museum

The Jewish Museum of Florida is having a comics exhibit starting later this month. The exhibit details are online and below. I’ll be presenting on October 21 on some of the resources available on comics for teachers. Zap Pow Bam – Super Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics 1938-1950 OCTOBER 16, 2007 – APRIL 30, 2008 Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane! It’s Zap Pow Bam, a colorful dynamic exhibit that immerses visitors in an interactive world of Super Heroes, highlighting the Jewish creators of comic books. These are America’s timeless icons like Superman, Batman, Captain America, Captain MarvelRead More →

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In: Collection Items, Digital Library, games, Library

Looking for a few more Monopoly game images led me to vast railroad images, so the archives I’ve seen might be better for a railroad style game first or alongside a Monopoly style game. These are just some of the great Florida railroad images. A railroad game based on Florida would have so many possibilities because of the abundance of archival materials, so the question would be how to structure it. Most railroad games are strategy, building different railroads to make money or to defeat rival businesses. To really use the historical materials, a railroad game set in Florida would need to follow the history,Read More →

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In: Collection Items, Digital Library, games, Library

Monopoly is a great game for gaming history and for game studies because of its history as the Landlord’s Game which protested ultra-capitalism and because of its structure–a simple theme that changes in appearance with fairly standard rules, but also house rules (often related to landing on Free Parking). An interesting project would be to try and reconstruct a typical Monopoly game using historical objects. The image with this post could be a great starting point for a new Florida Monopoly based on historical Florida images. The game could be a simple re-skinning. Computer skins refer to the interface or object appearance, so Firefox canRead More →

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In: Collection Items, comics, Digital Library, imagetext, Library

UF’s Special Collections Library includes a popular culture collection with loads of comics. I’m currently working on a small grant to fund the digitization of some of these rich materials. In order to help support the grant, I made the collection page and digitized one sample issue of Will Eisner’s PS* Preventive Maintenance. Hopefully I’ll be adding a great deal more in the near future, and I’ll hopefully be doing it with support for a much larger project later on. In the meantime, UF’s Libraries will be presenting at the Jewish Museum in Miami, Florida on October 21, and I’ll post details on it asRead More →