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In: UFDC

After 14 long days, UFDC is finally loading again. We had bad hardware and had to restore from a backup and with so many files (and permissions to be reset) it took a long time. Thankfully, UFDC is finally loading again. It shouldn’t be that important–not so important that it pains me when we don’t load for even 24 hours–but it is. Loading means seeing all of our work, our meticulous, time-consuming efforts realized. Without loading, we work without seeing or sharing the fruits of our labors and it’s actually depressing. Thankfully, UFDC is loading again and goodness is there a lot to load. We’llRead More →

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In: statistics, UFDC

We had a drive fail on our development box, which runs our loader. This wouldn’t have caused much of a delay, but we had people out and the drive should have recovered with a disk check (or at least that’s how it appeared). With the holiday yesterday, we’re running hopefully the last of the checks possible and we’ll either have the development server back up and running tomorrow or we’ll restore from the last backup. While it’s been a long delay–thanks to a weekend and another day off–we’ll soon be loading again and we have lots to load. With all of the files ready toRead More →

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In: artifacts, collaboration, partners, UFDC

The University of Florida’s historic biscuit dates back to 1913 when a hungry student mailed it to his parents as evidence of UF’s food quality. The George A. Smathers Libraries now preserves the historic biscuit. Our biscuit can be viewed online along with millions of other images through the University of Florida Digital Collections. Every institution archives objects illustrative of its own history. Join us here to let us know about yours. We’ve got the Biscuit. You bring gravy. More >>Read More →

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In: dloc, newspapers, rss, statistics, UFDC

UFDC now has more RSS feeds! The feeds are available here, http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc2/rss/, and can be added to readers or webpages of your choice (and these are again thanks to our ever-working, industrious and creative programmer)! The new RSS feeds and other improvements include ongoing optimization for faster loading online and for faster internal processing. Plus, we’re working rapidly and now have 2,60,4573 pages online from 61,108 titles and 116,492 volumes! The Digital Library of the Caribbean now stands poised to hit half a million pages with 475,992 pages online and the Florida Newspapers now include a whopping 306,702 pages. We’re loading quickly, so using anRead More →

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In: digitalcollections, statistics, UFDC

The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) currently has 109,991 total items, which make up 60,664 different titles (newspapers, serials, and so forth mean one title can have thousands of items so that’s why these numbers differ), for 2,471,489 total pages. Of that total 34,578 items in 5,067 titles with 512,204 pages have been added since July 1. Meaning, in only slightly over 3 little-ole months, we added 512,204 pages! That’s over my hoped-for goal–which was set intentionally too high based on what I thought we could do–of 150,000 pages a month! I don’t think I should keep setting unrealistic goals, but it sure isRead More →

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In: Bone, matheson, museum, photos, UFDC

The Alachua County Historic Trust: Matheson Museum, Inc. and the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries need help identifying historic photographs taken in Gainesville from 1920-1970. The photographs were taken by Elmer Harvey Bone and they’re all online within the Elmer Harvey Bone Collection here. The Elmer Harvey Bone Collection is particularly important to the Digital Library Center because the collection is shared between the Matheson Museum and the University Archives, and because our own Lourdes Santamaria-Wheeler chosen this collection for her graduate work in museum studies because of the way it connects traditional library and museum collections. The Gainesville Sun newspaper has anRead More →

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In: LibraryofCongress, LOC, NEH, newspapers, UFDC

UF’s Digital Library Center is currently loading more historic newspapers into UFDC (the University of Florida Digital Collections) and they look incredible! The newspaper here is The Weekly Miami Metropolis from June 26, 1908. Even though it’s over 100 years old, it’s one of the more recent issues from the historic papers being loaded. Like many of the historic papers, it features a political cartoon prominently on the first page. This and many other newspapers were digitized through the “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers” joint program by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. I’m still only beginning to explore theseRead 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: context, digital collections, interface, mapping, UFDC

The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) now include a “Map It” feature! With the “Map It” option, all items with geographic information are now displayed on a map using the Google Maps API. For instance, users can now see this photo of Gainesville mapped by clicking on the “Map It” tab, which shows a Google Map view of the photo’s location with a placemark. See the Citadelle Henri Christophe in Haiti, and then see the satellite imagery map for it, which still clearly shows the structure, along with the surrounding area! In case the maps aren’t exciting enough, UFDC also allows displays Flash filesRead More →

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In: catalog, digitalcollections, microfilm, UFDC

In looking at our scheduling for the past few months–with many people out for training, illness, and vacation and a much smaller student workforce due to summer schedules and budget cuts–I was worried that we’d fall far behind our optimum production level. Instead, we’re producing even more. We hit 2 million pages on July 9, and had already loaded another 100,000 pages to reach 2.1 million pages by July 28, and now we show 2,235,174 pages online, and we have more loading right now. This higher production level with lower staffing is only possible because we have so much that’s already partially done, with scanningRead More →