Blogs

Imaging Ginsberg's "Howl" Manuscript

June 1, 2017
by Doris C. Cheung
Digitization


Howl for Carl Solomon

We’re lucky in the Digital Production Group to see a wide variety of materials come across our imaging platforms.  We get to see and handle the highlights of all the collections as curators and bibliographers bring us the best in their collections to digitize for research, classroom teaching, and online access.  But does our every day become humdrum, when you see an original Beethoven score one day, a priceless map the next, and a gorgeous gold leaf medieval manuscript the third?

In celebration of Allen Ginsberg's 91st birthday this June 3, I asked our lead photographer Wayne Vanderkuil a few questions about his experience photographing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl manuscript – an original draft featuring numerous annotations and corrections.  It is considered one of the great works of American literature, the symbol for the Beat Generation, and the subject of an infamous obscenity trial.    

Ishiuchi Miyako, "Hiroshima #71," 2007

New exhibit at the East Asia Library - In/Visible: Nuclear Representation in Japan from Hiroshima to Fukushima

May 25, 2017
by Joshua Capitanio
Exhibits

The East Asia Library is pleased to announce the installation of a new exhibit in its entrance hall display cases entitled "In/Visible: Nuclear Representation in Japan from Hiroshima to Fukushima."  The exhibit was curated by Dr. Kyoko Sato, Associate Director of Stanford's Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), with the help of Joshua Capitanio, Public Services Librarian, and Regan Murphy Kao, Japanese Studies Librarian.  

Project South, 1965

KZSU Project South exhibit features streaming audio and transcripts of 1965 civil rights campaign

May 23, 2017
by Daniel Hartwig
Exhibits
Sound recordings
University Archives

The University Archives is happy to annouce the availability of a new exhibit for the KZSU Project South Collection featuring streaming audio and downloadable transcripts for this pioneering civil rights campaign. During the summer of 1965, eight students from Stanford University spent ten weeks in the southern states tape-recording information on the civil rights movement.

Chris DeBoever and Mary-Ellen Petrich at Carpentries Instructor Training

Software and Data Carpentries: Building Campus Capacity

May 23, 2017
by Amy E. Hodge
Science
One thing Stanford Libraries knows about running Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry workshops on Stanford’s campus is that workshop demand is high. Case in point: when we invited post-docs for a Data Carpentry workshop on an upcoming weekend this June, we had 120 people interested in the 40 available seats. 
 
That’s some serious demand. 
 
Software and Data Carpentry are sister organizations focused on teaching computing best practices to scientists. The idea is to make research faster, more efficient, and more reproducible by teaching scientists the basics of version control (usually Git), task automation (using the shell), and modular programming (typically in Python, but sometimes R). The two-day, hands-on workshops are taught by volunteer instructors, but workshop hosts are responsible for other costs, like instructor travel and food.
Henry Cowell, The Harp of Life (detail showing tone clusters)

Henry Cowell's tone clusters and The Harp of Life

May 23, 2017
by Ray Heigemeir
Manuscripts
Music

The maverick composer Henry Cowell wrote the solo piano work, The Harp of Life, in Menlo Park in 1925; it was later incorporated into the suite, Four Irish Tales, for piano and orchestra (1940). The original holograph score is held in the Memorial Library of Music in Stanford’s Department of Special Collections (MLM 232C). Accompanying correspondence from Cowell’s widow, Sydney, notes that only a few of Cowell’s 25 or so manuscripts employing tone clusters have survived, this being one. The Harp of Life refers to a great cosmic harp, upon which a plucked string announces the birth of a new being. Cowell’s tone clusters create an aural celestial environment within which the harp is played.

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