
Lucy Waldrop joins us as the archivist for the Helen and Newton Harrison papers
We are happy to announce that Lucy Waldrop will join Special Collections in September as the project archivist on the Helen and Newton Harrison papers project. This is an NEH-funded project and will conclude in February 2016. Lucy comes to us from Wichita State University, where as a project archivist, she processed several large collections including that of photographer and film director Gordon Parks. The Harrison collection is a significant acquisition and this preservation and processing project is one of several art projects being undertaken by Special Collections in collaboration with the Art Library in the coming year.

Friends on tape: A time capsule of Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, David Amram, and Gregory Corso
One of the remarkable things about large digitization projects is that not just formal events are preserved but also informal events are preserved for future access. As a matter of process the Stanford Media Preservation Lab takes part in the preservation of media that captures these special informal events. Recently while working on a portion of the Allen Ginsberg papers many recordings were digitized but (at least) two recordings were re-formatted that informally capture his friendships with other important 20th century figures.

Grover Sales Collection at Stanford in Washington

How Big is a Big Map? Digitizing William Smith's Stratified Map of England, Scotland and Wales from 1815
By Deardra Fuzzell and Wayne Vanderkuil
A historic geologic map, the data for which was compiled over the course of many years by one determined man, William Smith. Completed nearly 2 centuries ago, it remains incredibly relevant.
This is one of the largest and most difficult oversized objects Stanford has digitized thus far.
See how the Digital Production Group went about imaging this unique item.

Issei Oral History Project now streaming online
The Archive of Recorded Sound is pleased to announce the launch of a substantially updated finding aid for the Issei Oral History Project in Watsonville Collection. In addition to many other notable improvements, which include English summaries of each interview from the collection and additional subject headings to aid discovery, the new finding aid now includes streaming audio of each recorded interview. The finding aid is available on the Online Archive of California.

Early video from Ampex Corp collection at SF History Expo this weekend
The San Francisco History Expo is this weekend (March 1-2, 2014) at the Old Mint. Some very early video footage from the Ampex Corp collection at Stanford will be on view there.
This footage -- preserved through the state-wide California Audiovisual Preservation Project -- is special because it demonstrates Ampex's first portable video recorder, the VR-3000. It depicts scenes recorded on a San Francisco cable car going steeply down (probably) California Street in 1967!

Gordon Moore Project Archivist hired
We are pleased to welcome Pennington Ahlstrand to Special Collections. Penny has accepted a position as the Project Archivist for the Gordon Moore project and will be working primarily out of our new Redwood City location.