Blog topic: Digitization

GIS Day @Stanford

GIS Day @Stanford is coming, November 16th!

November 10, 2016
by Mr. Stace D Maples

GIS Day is an annual celebration of geospatial technologies, held on the Wednesday of Geography week. The Stanford Geospatial Center uses GIS Day as an opportunity to connect Stanford researchers to the cutting edge of geospatial technologies, services and applications through talks, workshops and other activities. This year, we'll have analysts, developers and scientists from DigitalGlobe, Mapbox, CARTO, NASA, The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and more, talking about their work to leverage geospatial data and technologies using machine learning, drones, satellite imagery, and historical data! 

Image of John Wayne paper based disc

An interdisciplinary solution to sound recording preservation

September 22, 2016
by Nathan Coy

Earlier this year the Stanford Media Preservation Lab and Conservation Lab were tasked with figuring out how to playback severely warped paper based disc sound recordings. The recordings in question are from a three disc set titled Man-Talk by Three Great Western Stars and each one-sided disc in the set features a single monologue by John Wayne, Bill Elliott, or Johnny Mack Brown.

Stanford University Libraries in Redwood City - construction photo

Library departments in Redwood City relocating (again) this fall

Most of the community is aware of the planned development for Stanford’s Redwood City Campus. What few of you may be aware of is that four departments from the Stanford University Libraries (SUL) moved out to Redwood City three years ago. We have been working out of 425 Broadway which is one of the buildings slated for demolition. The development of the new campus necessitates SUL’s relocation from 425 across the street to 500 Broadway – the former home of AMPEX.

The four units moving are: Stanford University Press, Conservation Services, Stanford Media Preservation Lab, and Technical Services branch of Special Collections. SUL staff in these four units have been working for over a year with SUL’s Facilities Department on planning for this interim space. I say interim, because in another 2.5 years, we’ll be moving back onto the new campus. 

John C. Lilly open reel audio tape

Open reel tapes, head blocks, and unconventional track arrangements at the Stanford Media Preservation Lab

Part of audio preservation work includes working with media that has peculiar characteristics. Sometimes the atypical qualities are a byproduct of how the recording was made by the recordist. An example of this type of problem that we occasionally see at the Stanford Media Preservation Lab is when an open reel tape is recorded over and there is remaining content hidden in certain spots of the tape. This presents specific problems in capture since tape heads are built for use with specific physical configurations of tracks and thus capturing the hidden spots outside of the normal range of track configuration is near impossible. With this in mind SMPL recently worked on obtaining equipment to address this challenging scenario.

Roll scanner model

Piano Roll Scanner Project (PRSP)

To facilitate research, study, and access to the historical piano rolls in its collection, the Stanford Player Piano Project is designing and constructing a piano roll scanner capable of scanning all of the various types of piano and organ rolls that have been collected to date. This new scanner is based on the work of Anthony Robinson, who is working with the Project to expand upon and improve his earlier design. Monica Caravias, a graduate student at the Stanford Product Realization Lab, is designing and building Stanford’s scanner in close collaboration with Anthony and under the direction of Prof. Craig Milroy. This is the first in a series of reports on the progress of constructing the scanner.

Govdocs are hard, mkay?

February 2, 2016
by Mr. James R. (Librarian) Jacobs

[This was originally posted on the blog "Free Government Information"] I thought I'd recount an interesting little research question I had yesterday that took me down a rabbit hole trying to answer. This student was looking for an edition of a 1913 publication called the "Immigration Laws and Rules" (WorldCat helpfully notes the uniform titles of "Laws, etc." and "Immigration Laws"!) but couldn’t find the right one in google books (go figure!).

El Pajarillo Errante

Color Our Collections: José Guadalupe Posada

January 28, 2016

Next week, from Feburary 1-February 5, archives are joining the adult coloring craze with #ColorOurCollections, providing coloring pages made from materials held within their special collections. We're joining in while simultaneously celebrating some newly released digitized material from the José Guadalupe Posada collection, circa 1875-1913. 

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