Laurie N. Taylor June 8th, 2008
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, 1899 Le Nouvelliste and learn how Port-au-Prince was handling the shift into 1900, or perhaps the December 31, 1900 issue would be more interesting because its news would be that of Haiti poised for the start of the Twentieth Century.
The news of the past show has history is made. On a much more localized scale, so too do the photographs of the news in the making. Many issues of the University of Florida’s Florida Alligator newspaper, which later became the Independent Florida Alligator, is included in the Florida Digital Newspaper Library, as are photographs from its early days.
One of the Florida Alligator issues online is from September 21, 1945 and it seems surprisingly mundane when scanned quickly. However, the first page includes two articles on the first page, one on General Van Fleet explaining that the human element he gained at the University of Florida was pivotal for his successes in World War II and the second on the University officially going co-ed, after “Legislature broke down and played ‘Lady Bountiful’ by saying veterans’ wives could come, provided their husbands were here first.” Bits of history are told in these pages, just as they are in photograph above. The University of Florida Digital Newspaper Library has digitized issues from 1945 - 1948, and others await along with additional titles and issues intended for the Florida Digital Newspaper Library and the Caribbean Newspaper Imaging Project.
Laurie N. Taylor June 8th, 2008
The Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries (ACURIL) 2008 Conference included many presentations, at least two of which spoke on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). Brooke Wooldridge and Marilyn Ochoa (both of dLOC, from FIU and UF respectively) held a workshop on usability for the dLOC contributor tools entitled “dLOC Toolkit and Usability Testing: A User-Centered Approach to Improve Electronic Resource Design.” OCLC’s Karen Calhoun presented “Digital Library Dreams,” on ways that research resources are being brought to student and researchers of and in the Caribbean, and how the dreams of effective resource delivery are coming true, with the Digital Library of the Caribbean among other resources fulfilling those dreams.
The American Library Association’s (ALA) annual conference will feature another presentation on dLOC, within the OCLC sponsored “Microfilm to Digital Roadshow.” Within this program, I’ll be presenting on dLOC’s success as a large microfilm digitization project, among its many other successes. I haven’t prepared my presentation notes yet, and this month is awfully busy so I may not post them until after the conference. In the meantime, I’ll be working with the University of Florida Libraries’ Latin American Collection experts, who are essential in all aspects of the dLOC’s microfilm digitization, as well they are for aspects of UF’s contributions to dLOC.
While we’re working on continued digitization, collection enhancement, collaboration with partners, and my presentation, dLOC is readily available for everyone. dLOC allows Open Access (no signons, passwords or anything of the sort) to over 3,400 titles with 9,641 items and 386,475 pages. We’re nearing the half-million pages mark for dLOC and we’ve really just gotten started in some senses. Because digitization is so labor-intensive, even as aided by the wonderful dLOC toolkit, because many partners have only recently joined, and because microfilm digitization is time-intensive, we’re essentially still only ramping up our production speed. We should expect to see both more materials to continue loading and materials to load at a more rapid pace in the future. For now, see what we’ve already loaded on www.dloc.com, which includes an “all items list” in text and thumbnail image views.
Laurie N. Taylor June 6th, 2008
We’re working hard and rapidly approaching our 2 million page mark! Our current statistics show 55,072 titles with 74,341 items and a whopping 1,896,811 pages.
From the last time I noted our numbers, on April 20 with 1.718 million pages, we’re set to eclipse our 100,000 pages a month as long as we can make it over 1.918 before June 20, and we should make it, provided the heat of the Gainesville summer, budget year changeover, and summer vacations don’t slow us down too much. The Baldwin Digital Library of Historical Children’s Literature is the largest single collection, with 484.048 pages, but at this rate anything could catch up quickly.
Laurie N. Taylor June 5th, 2008
The Digital Library Center has been awfully busy lately digitizing more materials and loading materials digitized earlier that we’re just now working through. It’s difficult to explain the sheer volume of materials or the wonders held within them, but sometimes real instead of web spiders can help.
Soon after waking up this morning, I found a wolf spider in my house. I carefully scooped her (or him) up and dropped the spider outside. I’m quite a fan of wolf spiders since they’re such interesting characters. They don’t weave webs and instead they stalk and chase their prey, jumping to catch meals, and they’re fast! They’re also helpful and are not dangerous (they will bite if scared or provoked, but normally they’re large enough to not accidentally bump and just terrorize and eat bugs).
I checked the digital collections to see what resources we have on wolf spiders, and we’ve got a few as expected. What I didn’t expect were the many children’s books referencing wolf spiders, like this one, this one, this one, and this one.
The University of Florida has more on wolf spiders within different research and service extensions (with the page for the image above) and the University of Kentucky has this great page for anyone interested in more on wolf spiders.
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.