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Tag: digitization

Women’s History Month: Adelaide Alsop-Robineau and Keramic Studio

Richard Naples
March 23, 2015
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Women’s History Month: Adelaide Alsop-Robineau and Keramic Studio
Alsop-Robineau & co, from the October 1912 issue of Keramic Studio
Alsop-Robineau & co, from the October 1912 issue of Keramic Studio

Around March, I’ll be forgiven if I start to pay a little more attention to the genders of the people I come across in our digital book and journal collection. After all, it is Women’s History Month. But one journal I keep coming back to is Keramic Studio, a monthly ceramics magazine produced around the turn of the 20th century that we digitized a couple years ago as part of our Books Online collection. Adelaide Alsop-Robineau began the journal in 1899, and it continued to be published into the 1920s. The work featured in the early years of the journal was primarily contributed by women, including Alsop-Robineau herself, along with her co-editor Anna B. Leonard. Both women were well known ceramics painters and designers. I find myself returning to the journal and perusing the many images and illustrations, especially when I need a dose of design inspiration.

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The Cost of Scanning One Page…

Liz O'Brien
February 10, 2014
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), in its global efforts to digitize biodiversity literature and make it freely available to the world, ensures that this precious knowledge is available to everyone, everywhere. The BHL currently provides access to over 42 million pages and over 87,000 images and is changing the face of research methodology. Scientists around the world are using BHL to identify and classify species, facilitate further scientific research, and support conservation efforts to prevent extinctions.

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Rare Books and Journals on Aviation Now Digitized

Chris Cottrill
January 2, 2013
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Rare Books and Journals on Aviation Now Digitized
Fantastic Plan Presented by Citizen Monge, of England, in 1798
1798 plan for an airship, featured in 1910 issue of Aircraft

In the early 20th century, few things excited the public more than the development of mechanized flying machines.  Whether aircraft or dirigible, these machines were documented in the specialized and popular literature of the day.  The Smithsonian Libraries is committed to digitizing its special collection of rare books and journals on the invention and growth of aviation. Many of the tiles we’ve scanned and digitized to date are accessible through the Internet Archive.

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Smithsonian Libraries Staff Assist with Growth of the Digital Public Library of America

Trina Brown
October 19, 2012
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Image of exterior, Chicago Public Library
Impressive exterior of the Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago

This post was written by Martin Kalfatovic, Associate Director, Digital Services Division, Smithsonian Institution Libraries.

On October 11-12, Nancy Gwinn, Director of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, and I participated in the Digital Public Library of America’s (DPLA) Midwest workstream and plenary meetings. The meetings were held in some wonderful meeting spaces at the Harold Washington Library Center of the Chicago Public Library (interesting side note: the building holds the record for largest public library space!).

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Research value? Taking the long view with weeding and digitizing at the AA/PG Library

Anne Evenhaugen
October 5, 2012
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The Real Latin Quarter

–This post was contributed by Kimberly Lesley, American Art and Portrait Gallery Library intern, summer 2012.

This summer I had the opportunity to work on two projects at the Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library: evaluating titles from the print reference section and selecting public domain titles for digitization. The majority of time was spent on the former, evaluating once heavily relied upon indexes and reference titles against databases and open access online resources. As I paged through volumes of reference titles I was grateful for the vast amounts of information available online with a few keywords and a couple clicks.

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