Blogs

Originally posted in ReMix: The Stanford University Libraries Newsletter

Sixteen volumes selected from among the Libraries’ “beautiful books” were recently added – approximately 1,400 images in all – to the Stanford Digital Repository, where anyone can
now view Renaissance artistic visions of the fall of Troy, see the universe as Galileo showed it to hiscontemporaries, hear Dr. Johnson pitching his idea for the first serious English dictionary, and admire one of the last magnificent examples of the golden age of English fine printing just before WWII. As with all of Stanford’s rare and antiquarian books, the printed originals of these digitized volumes are cataloged inSearchWorks and can be requested for viewing in the Special Collections reading room. Now, via each item’s PURL (persistent uniform resource locator, which ensures that these materials are available from a single URL over the long term), researchers can work with digital as well as original printed editions. Scholars have discovered, though, that each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and often find it useful to consult both in their work.

The Digital Production Group’s Map Scanning Lab has successfully completed the digitization of 500 antiquarian sheet maps depicting California as an island. 

http://purl.stanford.edu/sp153gq7179

In an important collaboration this month, Stanford Media Preservation Lab and the Department of Special Collections & University Archives are participating in the California Audiovisual Preservation Project, a pioneering statewide initiative, for a third round in a row. The CAVPP is providing funds to reformat film and video selections from SULAIR’s collections, including newly resurrected video from the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Stanford University Film Collection. These items will be sent to an outside vendor with the equipment necessary to capture preservation-quality digital files from these unique materials in obsolete formats. The digitized content will be preserved in the Stanford Digital Repository and made broadly available to the public through the California Light and Sound collection at the Internet Archive.