Joel Richard – Smithsonian Libraries and Archives / Unbound

Creating Colors for the Image Gallery

September 22, 2017

This post was written by Deja Bond, the Kathryn Turner Diversity and Technology Intern in the Smithsonian Libraries’ Web Services Department. Deja is an undergraduate Computer Science student at Spelman College. Her work this summer consisted of developing techniques to create data for enhancing the Libraries’ forthcoming Image Gallery re-launch later this year.

A group of interns stand before Henry the Elephant in the Natural History Museum. — National Museum of Natural History Interns, Summer 2017

My project was to design and code an algorithm to identify the predominant colors within an image. When someone performs a search in the Image Gallery (an online collection of images from Smithsonian Libraries books, still in beta), they are able to refine their search by subject, creator and publication date. The goal was to add another option for color. The big question was: how would I design and implement an algorithm that would return the predominant colors within an image for over 14,000 images sufficiently?

Getting Organized: Planning website projects

Joel Richard

December 18, 2013

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Engraved Image from a book of renaissance machines depicting a two-story machine with the gears on lower floor of the building. — Agostino Ramelli “Le Diverse et Artificiose Machine”, 1588

With the management of a large, ever-changing website comes the management of the individual projects that make up that website. The Smithsonian Libraries’ website is made up of many components, most of which were or are treated as smaller projects that have limited or ongoing scope. We’re in the process of testing and refining a documentation process by which our staff can propose and define additions to our site.

Moving Big Data

Joel Richard

September 23, 2013

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In my part of the Smithsonian Libraries, we work with data. You’ll hear talk of “big data“, which often refers data sets far larger than what we work on in more »

Refining Taxonomic Literature II Linked Data

Joel Richard

March 1, 2013

Improving Linked Data

Joel Richard

January 16, 2013

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Diagram of mine workings in book VI, "Machines for Drawing Heavy Vapours off from Tunnels" — Diagram of mine workings in book VI, “Machines for Drawing Heavy Vapours off from Tunnels”

In an earlier post in December 2011, we announced the release of the Taxonomic Literature II (TL-2) search tool that allows anyone to search and read its fifteen volumes. One of the things we mentioned in that post was our plans to open the TL-2 dataset to searchability and reuse by providing it as Linked Open Data (LOD).

This time, we’ll discuss details of our plans for Linked Open Data, some of the data we are extracting, and the challenges in creating data for a linked open data set.

Bringing Books* to the Web

Joel Richard

November 19, 2012

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The past couple of months in the web-development world have been spent building a foundation for a method of presenting digitized book-like things on the Smithsonian Libraries website. This has been an interesting time creating a home for the history, art, and culture part of our scanned collections.