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Category: Digital Content

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What Resolution Should I Use? Part 2

Posted by: Susan Manus

The following is a guest post by Barry Wheeler, Digital Projects Coordinator, Office of Strategic Initiatives In part 1 of this blog series, we saw that manufacturers claimed “resolution” is based on the number of steps per inch a small motor moves the scanner assembly (the rows) and the number of tiny sensors per inch …

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Persistent Paleontology: How Do Stones and Bones Relate to Digital Preservation?

Posted by: Bill LeFurgy

Amber Case coined the term persistent paleontologyin reference to electronic systems that continuously layer on new information. “The e-mail inbox is a rapidly expanding site of excavation which one must continually query,” she writes. “The newness of everything buries one’s ability to reach it without digging.” I like this association because it lets us look …

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Geopreservation Information for All Communities

Posted by: Erin Engle

You’re a graduate student in a geography education program learning about the concepts underlying a geographic information system, including creating, analyzing and editing geospatial data sets. Part of your coursework also includes learning about the preservation of GIS data. As an academic librarian, your position oversees the gathering and management of geospatial data as well …

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Doug Boyd and the Power of Digital Oral History in the 21st Century

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

Digital preservation and Internet access are not only transforming the way we record and convey history, they are also restoring the importance of humankind’s oldest means of storytelling: the oral tradition. One of the most influential leaders in this modern oral-history movement is Doug Boyd, director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History …

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The “Spherical Mercator” of Time: Incorporating History in Digital Maps

Posted by: Butch Lazorchak

In 1982 Interstate I-66 opened, providing a direct high-speed connection (except at rush hour) between downtown Washington D.C. and its western suburbs in Virginia. I was barely out of high school at the time so its opening didn’t really register with me, but now I live mere blocks away from the highway so it’s an …

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Before You Were Born: We Were Digitizing Texts

Posted by: Leslie Johnston

We are all pretty familiar with the process of scanning texts to produce page images and converting them using optical character recognition to full-text indexing and searching. But electronic texts have a far older-pedigree. Text digitization in the cultural heritage sector started in earnest in 1971, when the first Project Gutenberg text — the United …

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Digital Technology Expands the Scope and Reach of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections

Posted by: Bill LeFurgy

I am happy to have had the chance to interview Jan Ziolkowski, Director, and Yota Batsaki, Executive Director, of Dumbarton Oaks, about some recent developments involving use of technology to enhance the institution’s collections. Bill: The Dumbarton Oaks collections are as fascinating as they are diverse, relating as they do to Byzantine, Pre-Columbian and Garden …