Archive for the 'preservation' Category

Law and Life, with Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates and Caribbean Law

Laurie N. Taylor April 7th, 2008

Proclamation par Toussaint Louverture, General en Chef de l’armee de Saint-Domingue, aux Administrations Municipales de la Colonie et a ses ConcitoyenThe Digital Library Center has been working on getting legal materials online for the Caribbean and from other areas in our collections. Most recently, we’ve added to our law collection with Hansard’s British Parliamentary Debates, which are one of the best sources of the political record for the United Kingdom [1803-1891]. We’re almost done digitizing the 2nd series [1820-1830, 25 volumes] of the Debates, and later projects will digitize the rest provided they’re still in need. The University of Southampton is also working on Parliamentary Publications and related materials.

In addition to Hansard’s, the University of Florida Digital Collections includes Florida Law, with publications from the Florida House of Representatives and Florida Water Law, a cooperative project to develop and maintain a history of water management in Florida.

The Digital Collections also include law and legal materials from many Caribbean countries and organizations:

Along with the legal materials for the Caribbean, the Digital Library of the Caribbean includes newspapers (with historical newspapers like The Mid-Ocean from Hamilton, Bermuda in 1899, more recent news with Unite published in English and French from the Haitian Unity Council and the Dominica Star, and recent newspapers as well), audio, video, and all sorts of other materials like Annales du Conseil Souverain de la Martinique (Annals of the Sovereign Council of Martinique) and Nouvelliste, a daily journal for Haitian commercial, agricultural, and literary information.

Even with all of these materials, we’re actively much, much more including British Caribbean materials for countries when they were British Colonies. As we load more materials, it’s really interesting to see how the law is influenced by and impacts everyday life in the newspapers and art in the literature of the time and after.

Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)

Laurie N. Taylor March 12th, 2008

In working on other projects, I stumbled across this poster on the Digital Library of the Caribbean from last year. The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. All materials in dLOC are Open Access for everyone to see, but any rights remain with the owners or with the contributing partners. This is a great example of collaboration creating materials for all to use, while supporting the creators and their communities and nations. The digitized materials include Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.

The poster describes this all more fully, but I’m most impressed with the rights management and with the centralized technical infrastructure, which provides a scaffolding for new projects to begin digitization as well as an umbrella collection online to ensure that even new collections contribute to the growing critical mass of resources in a single space, allowing the searching across collections, while also allowing for individual collections to be searched on their own once ready. The poster says more though, so check it out (in Google Presentation Mode and the slide alone).

Google SketchUp Campus Contest 2008!

Laurie N. Taylor March 8th, 2008

Google is having another design-a-campus contest in SketchUp. It’s the Google 2008 International Model Your Campus Competition! Students around the world can compete by modeling their school’s campus buildings in Google SketchUp, geo-reference them in Google Earth, and submitting them by uploading to the Google 3D Warehouse. Students at higher education institutions almost anywhere in the world can submit individually or in teams of students. In addition to Google’s prices, for those modeling schools in Florida or the Caribbean or circum-Caribbean, please also submit your designs to the University of Florida Digital Collections or the Digital Library of the Caribbean, or your own school’s digital collections as applicable so that the schools can also host and archive your designs for current viewers and for posterity.

If you’re a University of Florida student designing the University of Florida campus, please let us know. We’re the folks at the Digital Library Center we’d love to lend moral support and positive thoughts throughout the competition and to host and archive the campus in 3D after the contest ends!

College of the Bahamas

Laurie N. Taylor March 4th, 2008

Birdhouse in a tree outside the Library at the College of the BahamasI’m currently in the Bahamas visiting the College of the Bahamas. I got in yesterday and was lucky enough to be here in time for the 10th Annual Lenten Tea Party, at Dr. Rhonda Chipman-Johnson’s residence on Emery Street in Highland Park, with Mrs. Mavis Collie as the MC. I really wish I had brought any sort of audio recording equipment with me so I could have captured and shared more from the event because it was wonderful. The tea party was not only enjoyable and entertaining, it also included Bahamanian History on Grant’s Town, Over the Hill, and future shock from welcome progress (and the less welcome new problems that come along with progress). Today I learned more about the College of the Bahamas Library. The College of the Bahamas Library is facing the same needs and challenges that so many libraries, including the University of Florida Libraries, are facing. The need for more information commons space with computers with internet access for students and the need to put more materials online so students and others can access those materials from anywhere.

The College of the Bahamas Library has the College Archives (with photos, catalogs, fliers on speakers and events, and more) and Special Collections, in addition to the General Collections, Reference, Circulation, IT support, and Technical Services. It was great to see the Library and see how much it contained even outside of specific collections, with historical photos framed and hanging on the walls, paintings celebrating important events also adorning the walls, and other artifacts explaining the history of the College and the Bahamas exhibited throughout the Library. I’m still processing all of the materials I’ve seen and all that I’ve learned, but the photo above is from the tree outside the Library, which has a birdhouse and a sign that reads “Soothing Moments.” The tree with its own beauty and its friendly sign and practical and aesthetically pleasing birdhouse parallels the Library at the College of the Bahamas because both the tree and the Library are friendly, welcoming, beautiful, and incredibly impressive in their ability to multi-task for the benefit of those around. I love what the tree says and represents with its sign and birdhouse, and I’m hoping the University of Florida Libraries might be able to take note and perhaps put up our own birdhouse.

Broadsides: Bloody Murders

Laurie N. Taylor January 4th, 2008

Crime Broadsides at the Harvard Law School Library
The Harvard Law School Library just announced a new digital collection highlighting crime broadsides. The collection is online here and the collection description is: “Just as programs are sold at sporting events today, broadsides–styled at the time as “Last Dying Speeches” or “Bloody Murders”–were sold to the audience that gathered to witness public executions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.” The broadsides span 1707 to 1891 and include accounts of executions for various common and uncommon crimes. Now, researchers can see both the cultural reception of sentences as well as the court documents from London’s central criminal court, the Old Bailey (the proceedings of which are now online). Having these materials online is a boon to researchers for seeing the culture at the time in terms of law, news, and media. The entire broadside, zine-esque form is also interesting in light of blogs and online newszines.

Servers of Babel

Laurie N. Taylor January 2nd, 2008

Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Library of Babel” told of a fictional library with every possible book. Within the vast library, all useful books and books of gibberish would be included together putting the process of finding information into a desperate state.

The rise in digital archives without a corresponding rise in organizational structures could lead to a “Servers of Babel” scenario, at least for awhile, when we’re archiving 27 exabytes (27,000 petabytes, or 27 billion gigabytes) of data in the next two years. Finding new ways to organize and create useful means for accessing this information–and finding ways to preserve decaying, deprecated, and dying files and formats–will make for exciting research and work for 2008 and beyond.

Feminist Archives

Laurie N. Taylor November 27th, 2007

womanews21977.jpgIn the 1970s Gainesville, Florida was home to many of the radical women of the Women’s Movement. Despite a rich web of activity and impact, much of this history is in danger of being lost or at least obscured by a lack-of-presence from current and accessible avenues. Luckily, researchers like Leila Adams are not only collecting the archival materials but also digitizing the materials to ensure preservation and access, thereby ensuring proper representation of the Women’s Movement.

The Radical Women in Gainesville collection is rapidly growing and more materials will be added soon. As materials are added and slowly populate through the web, hopefully articles like “From Barricades to Blogs” questioning the contemporary relevance of the Women’s Movement will have their answers and a whole slew of better questions, like “what can the current battles for equality and social justice learn from the Women’s Movement?”

Bugs vs. Books, Bugs Win (for now!)

Laurie N. Taylor November 20th, 2007


UF’s Digital Library Center is working on digitizing videos and putting them into the Digital Collections. In order to make sure these videos are preserved for the long run, we’re saving large and small files and taking the necessary steps. In order to make sure they’re found and used as soon as possible, we’re loading them into Youtube. While many of the videos are standard educational and institutional materials (interesting, but not email-forwarding type stuff), we have one wonderful video of books vs. bugs.

Bugs vs. Books Techno
Bugs vs. Books Darker

The video was made by the Preservation Department and the Nematology and Entomology Department and it’s three minutes of bugs eating books. The video was made so that people know about how dangerous bugs can be for books, but it’s also just a wonderful video. It’s also wonderful to see what sort of conversations these videos spark. When Cathy, our Preservation Officer, showed the video Erich, our former Preservation officer and now head of the Digital Library Center, noted that smoky brown roaches normally won’t eat books, since they normally live outside and generally prefer books older books that used animal byproducts in their binding. This led to a great discussion of bugs versus books and I learned that cockroaches normally eat books only when other food isn’t available, and that this happens when students leave and thus close the “bug cafeterias,” otherwise known as the food and drink in trash cans. The discussion also covered our worst case of roach-book-killing, which was years ago in an older building where duplicate law books had been stored by a well-meaning scholar. Then, the books were left alone while the building was renovated. When the misplaced books were found again, the bugs had eaten through the covers leaving only the pages inside. Luckily, the books were duplicates, but all of those folks saving things in Florida garages and mini-storage units should take heed–when bugs attack books, books lose. Or do they?

I’ve uploaded two versions of the video with audio (from Creative Commons-licensed music) and the short video clips from the video. These clips are for anyone to use in making remixes! Please make and share your own stories of bugs versus books. For music, there are loads of Creative Commons fair-to use music sources and CC lists many of them: http://creativecommons.org/audio.

The video citation information is: “Books vs. American Cockroaches (Periplaneta Americana)” by the University of Florida Smathers Library Preservation Dept. and University of Florida Entomology & Nematology Dept., Producer Cathy Martyniak, Videography & editing Richard Martyniak. Music online for the techno version and darker music.

Share your stories of bugs vs. books! Do bugs win?