During the fall of 2013, Stanford University Libraries (SUL) convened a working group to investigate the current state of access to audio and moving image materials held within its various collections, notably rare materials within its different special collections departments, along with those held at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Following many weeks of investigation, the Media Access Working Group (MAWG) produced a report in December 2013 outlining its findings, along with various recommendations to help tackle the issues discovered. The group considered issues relating to use cases, copyright status, available technologies - including media streaming, and content usage.

ePADD - NHPRC Innovation Grant underway

SUL’s Special Collections received an Innovation Grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to develop a software program (ePADD) for processing and making email archives discoverable. The end goal is to produce an open-source tool that will allow repositories and individuals to interact with email archives before and after they have been transferred to a repository. It would consist of four modules, each based on a different functional activity: Processing (arrangement and description), Appraisal (collection development), Discovery (online via the web), and Delivery (access). 

The project website was launched in August 2013 and lists: project goals, work plan, team, and collaborators. A twitter feed for the project was just launched although project updates and news will primarily be posted in Special Collections Unbound.

Section relating to Special Collections Technical Services at SUL's Redwood City location.

Relocation of Manuscripts Technical Unit and Rare Book Cataloging

Changes are on the horizon for Special Collections’ Technical Services Divisions - specifically the Rare Book Cataloging and Manuscripts Units. A few recent posts have referred to our imminent move to SUL’s Redwood City (RWC) location, so here finally is some information about this event. The Rare Book Cataloging Unit is the first to move and is being relocated over the Labor Day weekend; the Manuscripts Technical Services Unit will move there around the end of October.

Forensic/Born-Digital Lab help professor recovering files created 20 years ago using WordPerfect and stored in 5.25 floppy disks

Professor Donald Emmerson from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies found seven 5.25 floppy disks containing files created using WordPerfect 5.1 under MS DOS 3.3 in 1992 and 1993. Dave Sare at the Institute posted " Professor needs to convert old files SOLUTION" in the expert partners mailing list and thereafter we are connected.

Sorting drafts of Benoit Mandelbrot's essays.

New staff in Manuscripts Division

The Manuscripts Division is please to announce two recent hires: Christy Smith and Joe Geller. Both have been long time soft-funded staff members at the library.

Recovering Map Databases from a Zip Disk

The Forensics / Born-Digital lab recently received a request from the Earth Sciences Library to recover the data off of a Zip disk. The Zip disk format was created by Iomega corporation in 1994 and was a large floppy disk like format with a capacity of 100 MB. The drives are no longer commercially available but the Forensics / Born-Digital lab has a Zip disk drive to recover data from this format.

Asian American Students' Association records now available via SDR

The University Archives is pleased to showcase the results of ongoing efforts to collect and make available online born-digital materials from Stanford student organizations. The first such collection to be made available via the Stanford Digital Repository is records of the annual "Listen to the Silence" conference organized by the Asian American Students' Association (AASA).

Putting digital collections to work

With the University Archives making more and more collections available online, I'd like to take the opportunity to highlight some of the novel ways in which these materials are being used by researchers. What follows is a recent report from Ed Feigenbaum, Kumagai Professor of Computer Science Emeritus, about how his papers in particular are yielding interesting connections:

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