Blogs
Parker on the Web 2.1 Launches
When Parker on the Web 2.0 launched in 2018, it was the culmination of a long-term development plan to host an international collaborative project on sustainable infrastructure at no cost to the user. The engineering effort was immense, and that effort paid off: we saw a nearly 10-fold increase in visitors to the site, and the incorporation of IIIF functionality to the Parker manuscript content allowed the digital objects to be used in a myriad of new projects, from AI-driven initiatives like handwritten text recognition and feature recognition, to crowdsourcing transcription projects, and aggregation and reuse across multiple platforms. While Parker 2.0 was a technical success, the intellectual content of the site - the painstakingly-crafted descriptive metadata produced in the late 2000s that drove Parker on the Web 1.0 - was not fully added to the new platform. Thanks to the encouragement of dedicated Parker on the Web users and scholars, we were able to prioritize a large-scale reassessment of the project descriptive metadata, identify gaps, and restore the manuscript descriptions to their full glory - improving the discovery functionality for the site and providing users with rich descriptions for every manuscript in the collection. Parker on the Web 2.1, released on March 3, 2021, finally completes the migration of the project from a stand-alone site built on bespoke software and using a customized and unique metadata structure to a sustainable and extensible collaboration built on open source software and common metadata standards.
Virtual workshop on International Chemical Identifiers (InChI)
March 22-24, 8am-Noon Pacific Time, Free, Registration required
A major theme emerging from the December 2020 NIH Workshop on Ultra Large Chemistry Databases is the essential role of the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) in our ability to link and query across large and diverse chemistry data resources. Therefore, we now seek to bring the chemistry community together for an update on the development of the InChI and a discussion of its use in chemistry, biochemistry, and related research domains. Speakers will report on developments in the InChI field, usage of InChI in their organization, as well as challenges and areas not yet covered by InChI. The virtual workshop is scheduled for three half-days and will include short talks and panel discussions.
Browse group feature now available for Spotlight at Stanford exhibit creators
We're pleased to announce the availability of a new Spotlight at Stanford feature. Exhibit creators can now set up and configure browse groups for their digital exhibits. This high priority feature has been requested by Stanford Libraries staff as well as many external Spotlight stakeholders.
Stanford joins the Reveal Digital Initiative as a funding library
By Ben Stone and Rebecca Wingfield
Building a Spotlight service community
Spotlight was developed by Stanford Libraries in 2013/14 as open source software, to provide a solution enabling librarians, curators and others to create attractive, feature-rich websites that highlight digital collections. This has facilitated its adoption by many universities as a primary digital exhibit platform. In turn, Stanford benefits from community sharing of inspiration, design and code.
Introducing the Black at Stanford Anthology
Black at Stanford: An Anthology of Black Activism and Community at Stanford, is a new collaborative archive launched by the Black Community Services Center and the Stanford Archives.
Queerly Audible History: The Don Lucas Mattachine Society Tapes
Working in a large archive means you're always discovering collections - sometimes even collections that are already open and available. In this case, it was a group of audio tapes related to 1950s gay rights organization the Mattachine Society. In the midst of preparing for a vault move, we came across a tape labeled “Reel #6” which had been misfiled and listed as lost. After considerable sleuthing the reel was finally returned to its rightful box.