Blog topic: Born digital

Ted Nelson email archive now available

June 8, 2021

by Sally DeBauche

Stanford Libraries’ Department of Special Collections is excited to announce that the email archive of Ted Nelson is now available to researchers. Theodor Holm "Ted" Nelson is an information technology pioneer and systems humanist who began his work in these areas in the 1960s. Nelson founded Project Xanadu, a global hypertext system designed to permanently connect different types of documents. He also coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia. The Ted Nelson email archive contains 236,779 messages related to Nelson’s life and work between 2001-2019, covering his more recent work.

Launching the new Shared ePADD Discovery Module

June 2, 2021

by Sally DeBauche

The ePADD Project Team and the ePADD Discovery Consortium is excited to announce the launch of a new shared ePADD Discovery website! ePADD, the free and open source software for appraisal, processing, and providing access to email archives, developed by Stanford Libraries provides a stand alone email Discovery Module that can be hosted on a public web server.

Shah Commission of Inquiry Report 1, page 1

LEGACIES OF CONFLICT in South Asia: The Right to Heal

April 23, 2021

by Laura Wilsey

Born digital

Digital library

Digital preservation

Government information

Manuscripts

Media

New acquisitions

How many of us first developed an understanding of the Indian subcontinent and its peoples from the writings of Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie or Rohinton Mistry? Their stories, A Suitable Boy, Midnight's Children and A Fine Balance, introduced the rest of the world to the socio-political tensions fomenting in India since its independence from Britain in 1947.

Launching the Lighting the Way working meeting

April 20, 2021

by Mark A. Matienzo

The Lighting the Way project team is happy to announce the launch of the Working Meeting, a series of online meetings and facilitated activities held in April and May 2021. The Working Meeting focuses on convening small groups to develop a topic related to improving archival discovery and delivery into a written contribution of 5-10 pages to be published by the project this summer. Building on the work of the Lighting the Way Forum, the four sessions of the Working Meeting leverages the Liberating Structures framework and other proven techniques from human-centered design to provide a welcome and supportive environment for collaboration.

Our first session was held on Monday, April 19, 2021, and we are pleased to introduce you to the groups, participants, and facilitators that will be collaborating over the next six weeks and beyond. We will share more as our work progresses throughout and after the Working Meeting.

ePADD team for 2020 Mellon grant - Zoom meeting

A new phase for ePADD development

April 19, 2021

by Glynn Edwards

We are delighted to join Harvard University and the University of Manchester again on a collaborative venture over the next 18 months (2021-2022) funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, Email Archives: Building Capacity and Community managed by the University of Illinois.

ePADD version 8 now available

April 8, 2021

by Sally DeBauche

The ePADD development team is excited to announce the release of version 8!

ePADD is free and open source software developed by Stanford Libraries' Special Collections & University Archives that uses natural language processing and machine learning to support archival appraisal, processing, discovery, and delivery for email of historical or cultural value.

Improved Performance for Large Collections

Call for participation: Lighting the Way working meeting

February 8, 2021

by Mark A. Matienzo

The deadline for submissions has been extended to March 15, 2021.

The Lighting the Way project team requests proposals from groups of around 3 to 6 participants to participate in a series of online meetings and collaborative activities over the course of six weeks, starting the week of April 19, 2021. Each working group will develop a written contribution of 5 to 10 pages, exploring topics related to improving archival discovery and delivery, intended for inclusion in a larger handbook compiled and published by the Lighting the Way project team.

To apply, please complete an application form, including a 250-word abstract of your proposed topic and potential group participants, no later than March 15, 2021. A PDF version of the application form is available for your reference. Participants will be notified by March 29, 2021 if selected to participate.

These contributions are intended to build on the work of Lighting the Way: A National Forum on Archival Discovery and Delivery, held at Stanford University in February 2020, which focused on information sharing and collaborative problem solving to improve discovery and delivery for archives and special collections. The Forum provided rich opportunities for discovering points of convergence, which can be explored in the Preliminary Report on the Forum. Topics generated by Forum participants may provide a starting point for proposals, but applicants are welcome to propose topics that are not represented in the Preliminary Report appendices.