Pre-1600 Manuscript Project

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The Digital Production Unit has begun imaging manuscript leaves from Rauner Special Collections in support the work of “manuscriptlink,” a digital humanities project based at the University of South Carolina. We are digitizing all of our pre-1600 manuscript leaves from broken manuscript books. The project is seeking to rebuild the broken manuscripts books from their widely disbursed parts to enhance their research value to the scholarly community. The international collaboration seeks to recover a “lost” medieval library by gathering, aggregating, and describing the dispersed components of dismembered manuscripts, and by presenting digital images of them as virtual codices in a robust interactive online forum.

Many of these manuscripts can be viewed as part of Rauner’s Script to Pixels Collection.

New Open-Access Scholarship on The Occom Circle

Samson Occom, letter, to Susanna Wheatley, 5 March 1771

An article about the Occom Circle has just been published in the open-access scholarly journal Common-Place: The Journal of Early American Life.

Lauren Grewe’s “Samson Occom’s Missionary Correspondence and the Common Pot” contextualizes Occom’s correspondence within intellectual networks of Native and African American missionary writers.

The journal issue, edited by Jonathan Beecher Field, spotlights the work of of emerging scholars introducing open-access digital texts in Early American Studies.

DLP Staff Interview: Noah Skogerboe, Media Collections and Preservation Librarian

Next in our series of interviews with Digital Library Program staff. Today, Noah Skogerboe, Media Collections and Preservation Librarian, answers questions about his work.

What does the Media Collections and Preservation Librarian do?
Part of my job is to be a member of the team operating the Jones Media Center, helping to circulate our media collections and audiovisual equipment and assist patrons with their media projects. It is also my responsibility to handle media preservation and conversion projects for patrons and also across library units, so if you have media collections that need preservation attention or enhanced access, you may find yourself working with me.

How did you get here? That is, what was your path to being the Media Collections and Preservation Librarian at the Dartmouth College Library?
Long before figuring out that I wanted to be a librarian, I was playing in bands and dabbling with recording, often choosing outmoded analog formats for projects. I moved back and forth between studies in history and technical training in audio engineering, working as a live mix engineer (sound person) in a theater. I decided that pursing audio visual archiving via library school would be a good way to bring my proclivities together. I did some work for Minnesota Public Radio digitizing analog tape reels and worked for years for the Minnesota Historical Society on mass digitization projects and preservation and access projects mostly involving newspaper collections. I feel very fortunate to have landed here working with the kinds of collections and projects that I love best.

What’s a notable (interesting, challenging, unusual) project that you’ve worked on recently (here or at a previous position)? Or, what are you looking forward to working on in your position at Dartmouth?
I recently took in some analog magnetic tape reels of field recordings made circa 1970 in Sierra Leone of rural folk musicians. The recordings come from an area subsequently devastated by civil war so it is a real treat to be able to hear them and work to preserve them and perhaps help to make them accessible for future research. Included are some recordings of children singing that are particularly beautiful.

What do you wish that more people knew about digital libraries?
How to access them! The tremendous benefit of our digital collections is their accessibility: that they can be searched and discovered remotely. We ought to strive to expose our digital collections!

Who are you when you’re not being the Media Collections and Preservation Librarian?
I’m probably exploring the Upper Valley countryside with my family (more like dragging them along) or maybe tinkering on a music project. I have many hobbies but little expertise.

What new tools are coming in the world of digital libraries? How are we preparing for changes in the field? (question from Kevin)
One thing I’m excited about is speech-to-text technology that can provide the full text searching benefits that we have come to rely upon for print formats (via optical character recognition) for audio formats such as oral histories. I think we need to continue our efforts to digitize and expose our hidden collections especially as researchers turn to new methods of mining and extracting data.

What question would you like another member of the Digital Library Program staff to answer?
What do you see as most valuable metadata strategy or philosophy for enhancing access to our digital collections?

Photo Files support research into Dartmouth ice hockey jersey history

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On February 13, the Valley News published an online article by Dave Bailey exploring the aesthetic history of the Dartmouth men’s ice hockey team’s jerseys. Inspired by the introduction of a new alternate jersey this year, the article features an image gallery comparing the team’s various jersey designs dating back to the 1928-29 season. Bailey acknowledges the Digital Library Program’s Photographic Files image collection as a source “invaluable to [his] research”. View more of the history of hockey at Dartmouth, or learn about other topics of your choice, by exploring the Photo Files collection yourself!

Inglourious Nitrates

Nitrate film, or nitrocellulose, is a highly combustible material that was used in commercial film production in the first half of the twentieth century. Several theater fires, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people, have been attributed to it. Quentin Tarantino used it as a plot device in his 2009 alternate-history WWII movie Inglourious Basterds (spoiler alert): a Jewish cinema proprietor gets her revenge on an assemblage of Nazi leaders (including Hitler) by igniting a collection of nitrate film. Given that it is prone to spontaneous combustion as it deteriorates, nitrate film is not a material that most libraries and archives want sitting around in their collections, despite its utility in disposing of Nazis.

Recently, the Digital Library Program embarked on a project to digitize a collection of  negatives held at Rauner Library that we suspected might contain nitrate film (as well as acetate safety film, which replaced nitrate film around 1950). Given the potentially hazardous nature of the materials, our process has several steps. The negatives are stored in our Preservation freezer; keeping nitrates at low temperatures has been shown to inhibit combustion. We digitize the negatives according to a process similar to our other workflows: the items are defrosted, accession numbers are assigned, images are captured

with the scanner, metadata from the negatives’ envelopes are associated with the image files, and the materials are returned to the freezer, to be discarded eventually.

The objective of the project is to preserve the content of the original materials. We’re finding images similar to those in our photo files: campus buildings, sporting events, fraternity and student organization formals, New Hampshire landscapes, and portraits of faculty and administrators. Nitrate film was prized for its depth of detail and the luminosity of the silver emulsion.

A box of negatives, ready to be processed.

A box of negatives, ready to be processed.

A negative viewed on the lightbox

A negative viewed on the lightbox

Wes Benash examines a negative. Note the nitrile gloves.

Digital Library Program staff member Wes Benash examines a negative. Note the nitrile gloves.

A music professor. Note the contrast and detail.

A music professor. Note the contrast and detail.

The Tuck School campus. Many of the negatives show similar damage.

The Tuck School campus. Many of the negatives show similar damage.

A landscape, possibly the summit of Mt Cardigan.

A landscape, possibly the summit of Mt Cardigan.

A picnic? An outing? Note the lady with the camera in the foreground.

A picnic? An outing? Note the lady with the camera in the foreground.

Video: Dartmouth Vietnam Project

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Go behind the scenes of The Dartmouth Vietnam Project (DVP), a collaboration between the Dartmouth College Library and the History Department, through a new promotional video.

Since 2014, the DVP has trained students in the art and method of oral history, preparing them to conduct interviews with members of the Dartmouth community who experienced the Vietnam War era. Interviews are recorded, transcribed, and added to the oral history collection at Rauner Special Collections Library. To date, the DVP has produced 95 interviews that capture a pivotal moment in U.S. history from the perspectives of military veterans, anti-war activists, civil servants, educators, and more. For a look at the DVP so far (including some familiar Library faces, places, and collections), watch the 7-minute video.

The video is a creation of the Media Production Group and student Media Makers, with support from DCAL’s Experiential Learning Initiative.

DLP Staff Interview: Kevin Warstadt, Lathem Digital Library Fellow

Next in our series of interviews with Digital Library Program staff. Today, Kevin Warstadt, Edward Connery Lathem ’51 Digital Library Fellow, answers questions about his work.

What does the Edward Connery Lathem ’51 Digital Library Fellow do?
The Digital Fellowship is in many ways a learning position, and as such involves interacting with several different facets of the Digital Library Program. Since I started, I’ve produced digital objects through photo capture and scanning, curated faculty publications through Symplectic Elements, edited and marked up text for the Journal of e-Media Studies, and written blog posts on digital collections. I also represent the Digital Program on the Library Marketing and Communications Committee. The position has given me the opportunity to see many different aspects of library work and to cooperate with the great people that we have here at the library.

How did you get here? That is, what was your path to becoming the Digital Library Fellow here at Dartmouth?
I graduated from Georgia Tech in 2013 with a degree in Science, Technology, and Culture. In that program, I did a lot of work in film and history, and dabbled some in museum studies. I started up in Dartmouth’s MALS program in spring 2014 and simultaneously started working part-time doing capture for the Photo Files project. I continued working here during my time as a student studying writing, history, and literature. When applications for the position opened up earlier this year, I applied and was accepted.

What’s a notable (interesting, challenging, unusual) project that you’ve worked on recently?
I did some work using OpenRefine right after I started in July, reconciling geodata with place names. OpenRefine is a useful tool for sorting through and editing data en masse. It allows a user to sort data with facets and instantly find and change entries that diverge from a standard or desired format. There was some difficulty in learning the ropes of the reconciliation process as my coding knowledge is fairly limited. However, after some finagling and Lynda.com videos, I was able to get it running. This process should allow us to link artifacts or documents to a specific geospatial point, which could open up a number of paths for interesting projects in the future.

What do you wish that more people knew about digital libraries?
My primary concern is that people know what exists within our collections. I’d also like to see increased use of those collections. I’ve grown particularly fond of the Photo Files over the last couple of years and it makes me sad that there are people and places in those images waiting to be remembered.

As for the process itself, I suppose it would be good for library patrons to know the amount of labor that goes into digitization. This would help with the digitization request process and might also aid us in getting more funds/resources so that we can expand our digital selection.

Who are you when you’re not being the Digital Library Fellow?
I’m one of the great indoorsman of our age. I’ve explored all over the great lands that stretch between my desk and my kitchen. When I’m not schlepping down to the Coop for groceries or hanging out on that cool new bridge in White River Junction, I’m usually writing short stories or screenplays.

On campus, I’m a member of the Dartmouth Writer’s Society and am currently the art editor for the MALS Journal (now called Clamantis). I attend Dartmouth Film Society meetings when time allows, and I’ve written film notes for them over the last couple of years.

I’m also in the market for an affordable used car if anybody has any leads.

Are there Dartmouth collections that are currently restricted that you’d like to see available in an open institutional repository like the Dartmouth Academic Commons? (question from Jen)
Ultimately, I’d like to see everything available online. Rauner Special Collections Library has so many fascinating pieces that are out of reach for people who can’t make it to the physical space. Unfortunately, we don’t have the staff to digitize everything that we find interesting. For example, during my research on one of our pieces for a blog post, I ended up looking into an old newspaper, but struggled to find any copies online. As it turned out we had some physical copies in Rauner. Being on campus, I’m able to access those pieces, but others might not be able to. It would be nice to get those things up online so that everyone has access.

What question would you like another member of the Digital Library Program staff to answer?
What new tools are coming in the world of digital librarianship? How are we preparing for changes in the field?

DLP Staff Interview: Jen Green, Digital Scholarship Librarian

Next in our series of interviews with Digital Library Program staff. Today, Jen Green, Digital Scholarship Librarian, answers questions about her work.

What does a Digital Scholarship Librarian do?
I work with faculty, students, and staff to provide them with current information and resources that can help them disseminate the results of their research, scholarship, teaching, and learning. This means that I work closely with Information Technology Services colleagues to plan, design, and develop Dartmouth’s emerging online scholarly repository, the Dartmouth Academic Commons and other information systems that will integrate with it. This will be a place where Dartmouth scholars can share their work openly with the world. In addition to this, I work across campus departments to build awareness about other tools, resources, and services that support publication generally and open access publishing more specifically. In an effort to help people understand the scholarly communication/publishing landscape, I coordinate education and outreach opportunities about author rights, copyright, managing scholarly identity and broader impact of research, and innovations in scholarly publishing. My work relies on highly collaborative relationships with many colleagues in the Library, Information Technology Services, the Council on Libraries, as well as Administrative offices within a variety of departments at Dartmouth.

How did you get here? That is, what was your path to becoming the Digital Scholarship Librarian here at Dartmouth?
My path to becoming a Digital Scholarship Librarian is long and winding, but I think that’s probably true for many librarians. I have always had an interest and passion for helping people work through challenges and problems, answer questions, and discover new pathways, so I spent the first three years of my undergraduate degree pursuing Psychology. When helping people in this capacity didn’t seem like the right fit for me, I refocused my attention on my own challenges, questions, and ideas by taking coursework in Art and Art History (another passion of mine). Through this, I became extremely interested in how people interact with and respond to works of art, which led me to apply for a museum internship. I ended up working in museum registration where I was asked to organize the museum’s large collection of digital and analog images representing their permanent collection. Working closely with the museum’s images, I gained a personal respect and understanding for the importance of information management and the critical role it plays in helping people find and enjoy all types of scholarly and cultural content.  This is what led me to pursue work in other libraries, digital image collections, and ultimately a Master’s degree in Library and information Science. After I graduated, I continued to work in art libraries, managing digital image collections for teaching.  Eventually, this role expanded to managing digital collections and projects more broadly for teaching and research at an academic institution. Shifting my perspective from managing image collections to managing image, publication, and audio collections raised my awareness of copyright, fair and responsible access to scholarly content, and the important role that open access can play in making content available to a wide audience regardless of institutional affiliation or economic status. Access to content is a key component to advancing research and technology around the world. As my interest and passion grew for how to support open sharing of scholarly, authoritative content while navigating issues of copyright and ownership, I began looking for Librarian positions that focused on this. Fortunately, scholarly communication is a growing area within the field of librarianship, and even more fortunate was that there was an opportunity for me to apply for one such position at Dartmouth College.  I am very proud to be doing this work here at Dartmouth, and the conversations I’ve had about scholarly publishing and open access with students, faculty, and staff have been extremely engaging and exciting to pursue.

What’s a notable (interesting, challenging, unusual) project that you’ve worked on recently?
Part of my job involves managing the Dartmouth Open Access publishing fund, which provides Dartmouth scholars funds to pay for fees that open access journals charge authors to publish their work.  These fees can be extremely high, and in some cases authors will decide not to publish in open access journals because it is personally unaffordable. Dartmouth College is a member of the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE), which means that we’ve designated a budget to help authors pay for these fees if they request them and if the journal to which they’d like to publish qualifies as an open access journal. Processing and approving these requests has been interesting work because it allows me to see what new and exciting research is happening at Dartmouth. It’s also been interesting to see in the past year that some traditionally subscription-based journals are now flipping to open access models. I think this is a growing trend, and it will be interesting to observe how the fee/funding structures change as more journals are open and more authors are publishing in that way.

What do you wish that more people knew about scholarly communication (in relation to the Digital Library Program or not)?
I would like people to know that we are here to help them understand the complicated issues surrounding publishing, copyright, open access, and how to manage your research identity online. We have resources (funding and information) that can help scholars of all types make decisions about where to publish and how to negotiate their rights with their publisher. I don’t think people always realize that they can call us for consultation on these issues and that we are happy to meet them in their office or in ours to answer their questions about scholarly communication, copyright and publishing. I’d also love people to know about our Scholarly Communication Lab blog and follow us there. It’s a great place to start if you have questions related to scholarly communication or just want to know what’s new within Dartmouth’s Scholarly Communication Program.

Who are you when you’re not being the Digital Scholarship Librarian?
Currently, I am President of the Visual Resources Association, a multidisciplinary organization dedicated to furthering research and education in the field of image management within the educational, cultural heritage, and commercial environments. Like myself, many members of this Association are finding that the scope of their work is drifting from managing image collections exclusively to managing many forms of media and scholarship quite broadly. I stepped into this leadership role to share my perspective on how to manage and embrace that shift as visual collection managers and apply our vast knowledge of image organization and access to a wider range of materials.

Outside of my work, I am a cook, an enthusiast of film/music/art, a hiker, a traveler, a cyclist, a painter, and a writer. My husband and I love to explore new places with our two children, and we’ve found that academia has led us to wonderful and interesting places around the world and has tapped nicely into our sense of adventure.

Is there a Library collection or a period of Dartmouth history you’d like to see digitized and made available to the world? (question from Anthony)
I would love to see greater access to digital images of the Hood Museum’s permanent collections. The Hood Museum provides wonderful access to objects within their collection, and I think this access greatly enriches many different teaching and learning opportunities. The kind of access that students have to the physical objects is exceptional, and I think online access to the increased portions of the museum’s collections would enrich museum visits and teaching opportunities.

What question would you like another member of the Digital Library Program staff to answer?
Are there Dartmouth collections that are currently restricted that you’d like to see available in an open institutional repository like the Dartmouth Academic Commons?