Category Archives: Announcements

Duke Joins the Digital Public Library of America!

June 25, 2014 Molly Bragg

We are excited to announce that Duke University Libraries has officially joined the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)! Our first contribution is metadata from the Broadsides and Ephemera digital collection, which is now accessible through DPLA.

dpla_duke — Broadsides and Ephemera collection in the DPLA’s interface.

Many of us here at Duke have been excited about the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) since their launch in April of 2013. DPLA’s mission is to bring together America’s cultural riches into one portal. Additionally, they provide a platform for accessing and sharing library data in technologically innovative and impactful ways via the DPLA API. If you are not familiar with DPLA, be sure to take a look at their website and watch their introductory video.

The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center (NCDHC) is our local service hub for DPLA and we met with them to understand requirements for contributing metadata as well as the nuts and bolts of exposing our records for harvesting. They have a system in place that is really easy for contributing libraries around the state, and we are very thankful for their efforts. On our side, we chose our first collection to share, updated rights statements for the items in that collection and contacted NCDCH to let them know where to find our metadata (admittedly these tasks involved a bit more nitty gritty work than I am describing here, but it was still a relatively simple process).

Metadata for one of Duke University Libraries Broadsides as seen in the DPLA.

In mid-June, NCDHC harvested metadata from our Broadsides and Ephemera digital collection and shortly thereafter, voila the records are available through DPLA!!

We plan to continue making more collections available to DPLA, but are still selecting materials. What collections do you think we should share? Let us know in the comments below or through Twitter or Facebook.

Thanks again to NCDHC for the wonderful work they do in helping us and other libraries across North Carolina participate in the ambitious mission of the Digital Public Library of America!

Announcements, Collections

New Collection Addition: Sidney D. Gamble’s Hand-Colored Lantern Slides

May 27, 2014 Molly Bragg

I started working on the metadata of Sidney D. Gamble photographs in January 2008 on a spreadsheet with no matching images. The nitrate negatives from the collection had just been digitized and resided in a different location. I was, however still amazed by the richness of the content as I tried very hard to figure out the locations of each picture, half of them were so challenging that I must have guessed wrong for most of them in my struggle to meet the project deadline. It was after the digital collection was published that I started to study more thoroughly these images of Chinese life more than 100 years ago. And they have since then continued to amaze me as I understand more of their content and context with the various projects I’ve done; and to puzzle me as I dig deeper into their historical backgrounds. I’ve imagined China in those times in readings, enhanced by films early and recent, yet Gamble’s photographs help me to get closer to what life really looked like and how similar or different things appeared. Recently the hand-colored lantern slides in the collection have made me feel even more so.

Lantern slides are often hand-colored glass slides, commonly used in the first half of the twentieth century to project photographs or illustrations onto walls for better visualization. We are yet to find out whether Gamble colored these slides himself or instructed the work by giving details of the description of the objects. I find the colors in these images strikingly true, suggesting that they were done by someone familiar with the scene or the culture. Whether it is a remote hillside village in a minority region in Sichuan as shown above or the famous Temple of Heaven in Beijing below, the color versions are vivid and lively as if they were taken by a recent visitor.

Gamble used these color slides in his talks introducing China to his countrymen. He included both images of Chinese scenery and those of Chinese people and their lives. The large amount of images of Chinese life in the collection is a record of his social survey work in China, the earliest of its kind ever done in China; as well as a reflection of his curiosity and sympathy in Chinese people and their culture. Funeral is one of Gamble’s favorite subjects, and I have no clue whether green was the color for people’s clothes working at funerals as I see several images with men dressed in green doing all sort of jobs, such as this man carrying the umbrella, the color is not offensive but needs to be studied.

Funeral Men Umbrella Carrier Blowing Horn

The Lama Temple, or Yonghegong, is an imperial Tibetan Buddhist Temple. Every year in early March, masked lamas performed their annual “devil dance”, a ritual to ward off bad spirits and disasters on a Monday. I learned about this performance through Gamble’s photographs and the color images have simply added more life. A search online for images taken today brought back photos that look just similar.

There are nearly 600 colored slides in the collection, one can imagine the reaction of the audience when Gamble projected them on the wall in his talk about the mysterious China in the Far East. With the help of a capable intern, I was able to create an inventory last fall, matching most of them with existing black and white one in the collection. A project was proposed and approved quickly to digitize these lantern slides. The project was done quickly and a blog post by one of our digitization experts provided some interesting details. In June this year, selected color images will appear in the travelling exhibit that professor Guo-Juin Hong and I curated and started in Beijing last summer when it opens at Shanghai Archives’ museum on bund. I believe they will fascinate the Chinese audience today as much as they had when Gamble showed them to the American audience.

Post Contributed by Luo Zhou, Chinese Studies Librarian, Duke University Libraries

Announcements, Uncategorized

The Duke-SLP partnership – seeking design contractors for pilot website

May 6, 2014 Karlyn Forner

In the 1960s, an unstoppable group of student activists partnered with black southerners to mount an all-out attack on Jim Crow. One person, one vote – that was the idea that drove them when they woke up each morning. In some of the most remote and forgotten areas of the deep South, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and local people risked their lives to secure the right to vote for all Americans. Fifty years later, that struggle is as central as ever.

Fannie Lou Hamer in Hattiesburg. — Voting rights and SNCC activist Fannie Lou Hamer in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 1964. Image courtesy of the Civil Rights Movement Veterans site.

The SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University are teaming up to chronicle SNCC’s historic campaign for voting rights. The pilot phase of that partnership, a project titled “One Person, One Vote: The Legacy of SNCC and the fight for voting rights,” will reexamine SNCC’s activism in light of current struggles for an inclusive democracy.

The OPOV pilot site will feature documents, photos, and audiovisual materials born out of SNCC’s fight for voting rights. From this material, SNCC veterans will use oral histories, critical curations, and featured exhibits to rethink the impact of their activism.

We’re looking for a talented, Triangle-based design team to help us connect the past to the present. Designers will create a WordPress theme that brings clarity and flow to the overlapping narratives of voting rights activism. See the prospectus for candidate contractors linked below. We’d like to make contact with you now, with a more extensive Call for Proposals to follow in May.

“One Person, One Vote: The Legacy of SNCC and the fight for voting rights” – Prospectus for candidate web contractors, Spring 2014

Announcements, Collections, New Collections

Announcing the DukEngineer Digital Collection!

April 30, 2014 Melanie A Sturgeon

As the Engineering Librarian, and guest blogger for Bitstreams, I’m excited to announce Duke Digital Collections newest digital collection: DukEngineer!

The DukEngineer magazine is the student run publication of the Pratt School of Engineering. This collection was compiled from the holdings of Duke University Libraries, Duke University Archives, and Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering and includes nearly every issue published during 1940-2013. The amazing team in the Digital Projects and Production Services department at the Library digitized 205 DukEngineer issues into images and text searchable pdf’s. This digital collection was coordinated to be part of the 75th anniversary celebration of Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering in 2014-2015.

As stated in the inaugural issue dedication in May of 1940, DukEngineer has remained, “strictly a student venture” that covers the activities of engineering clubs, societies and departments at Duke. The publication also includes articles about advancements in engineering at Duke and worldwide, in addition to alumni and faculty profiles. The inclusion of a final page of jokes, puzzles or cartoons has also remained a tradition throughout the run of DukEngineer.

Browsing the collection provides a fascinating overview of how things have changed and remained the same for engineering students since 1940.

Changing Technology…

For engineering students, the magazine has many examples of the progress of technology for completing calculations, from the trusted slide-rule to (rather large) calculators, and then (even larger) computers. Eventually things became smaller and smarter, and Duke engineers have been part of that progress.

“The engineer’s most useful servant, be he designer or otherwise, is his slide-rule. Long, complicated calculations can be made with reasonable accuracy in a very short period of time with this instrument.“ -Sept 1945

Other technological advances that are covered include an explanation of the television in Dec 1940 and the many advancements in the space race during the 1960’s – just to name a few.

Changing Styles…

75 years of engineering students and faculty, means 75 years of changing styles, fashions and hairstyles. The students in the 1940’s frequently wore jackets & ties to class (looking more dressed up than most faculty today), where as in the 1970s and 80’s short shorts and big hair was the way to go. Of course, throughout the years, there may have been an examples or two of the stereotypical white shirt, pocket protector, black glasses, engineer style.

Changing Culture…

Reading through the magazine, written from student’s perspective of the time, it is easy to be surprised at how things have changed in society as a whole and here at Duke. The cartoons, and joke pages are some of the prime examples of what was considered socially acceptable throughout the years. One of my favorite jokes (that I can use in this post) is from February 1956.

Mother—”What are you reading, son?”
M.E.—”Playboy.”
Mother—”Oh, all right, dear, I was afraid you had gotten hold of a ‘DukEngineer.’ “

The 1960’s and 1970’s also included a feature “Girl of the Month.” Some ‘lucky’ co-ed on campus (not an engineering student) was chosen to be highlighted each issue with a photo spread and some details about their likes, major and sometimes even a name. An issue in Spring of 1986 did a flashback of this and decided to try to even the score with “Men of the 80’s”.

Changes at Pratt…

Of course, engineering at Duke has changed a lot through the years also. The College of Engineering at Duke became official in 1939. It has grown in the number of students, faculty, departments and buildings as it evolved into the Pratt School of Engineering that we know today. The big move of engineering from East Campus to West is illustrated on the cover of March 1945. Other highlights of engineering growth include the building of “old red” (aka Hudson Hall), the design and building of the new Teer engineering library building through the more recent Fitzpatrick Center & CIEMAS.

However, some things never seem to change…

We hope you enjoy browsing the issues of the DukEngineer digital collection. There are many amazing articles about advancements in engineering, fantastic advertisements, pictures of students, profiles of faculty and alumni, etc.

Happy 75th Pratt!

Post Contributed by Melanie A. Sturgeon

Announcements, Technology

A New Dimension for Duke’s Digital Collections

April 1, 2014 Molly Bragg 1 Comment

As our long-term readers of Bitstreams will attest, the Duke Digital Collections program has an established and well-earned reputation as a trailblazer when it comes to introducing new technologies, improved user interfaces, high definition imaging, and other features that deliver digital images with a beauty and verisimilitude true to the originals held by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Thus, we are particularly proud to launch today our newest feature, Smell-O-Bit, which adds a whole new dimension to the digital collections experience.

Smell-O-Bit is a cutting-edge technology that utilizes the diffusers built into most recent model computers to emit predefined scents associated with select digital objects within the Duke Digital Collections site. While still in a test phase, the Digital Collections team has already tagged several images with scents that evoke the mood or content of key images. To experience the smells, simply select Ctl-Alt-W-Up- while viewing these test images:

A bold scent for a bold product, Pabst-ett cheese!

Made by the Pabst brewing company while beer was off limits due to Prohibition, Pabst-ett cheese was soft, spreadable, and comfort-food delicious. We’ve selected a bold, tangy scent to highlight these comforts. The scent may make you happy enough to slap your own cheeks!

The smell of cigarette smoke, margaritas, and salt from around glass rims and chess players’ brows will make you feel as if you have front row seating at this chess match between composer John Cage and a worthy, but anonymous opponent.

You may feel yourself overwhelmed with the wafting scent of char-broiled deliciousness, but don’t forget to take a deep inhale to detect the pickles, ketchup, and mustard which makes this a savory image all around.

Perhaps you smell garbage? If so, your Garbex isn’t working! What about flies, cats, or dogs? Or, perhaps you just smell a rat. Alright, you caught us.

Happy April Fool’s Day from Duke Digital Collections!!

Post Contributed by Duke Digital Collections

Announcements, New Collections, Technology

Announcing the Duke Chapel Recordings Digital Collection and Video Player!

March 5, 2014 Molly Bragg

Duke Digital Collections is excited to announce our newest digital collection: Duke Chapel Recordings!

This digital collection consists of a selection of audio and video recordings from the extensive collection of Duke University Chapel recordings housed in the Duke University Archives, part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The digital collection features 168 audio and video recordings from the chapel including sermons from notable African American and female preachers. This project has been a fruitful collaboration between Duke Chapel, the Divinity School, the Rubenstein Library and of course the digital projects team in Duke University Libraries. To learn more, visit the Devil’s Tale blog (the blog of the Rubenstein Library).

But wait, there’s more!

sermon video — Brenda Kirton speaks in this still from one of the Duke Chapel Recordings digital collection.

Fifteen of the recordings were digitized from VHS tapes and are available as video playable from within the digital collection. These are our first digitized videos delivered via our own infrastructure. Our previous efforts have all relied on external platforms like YouTube, iTunes, and the Internet Archive to serve up the videos. While these tools are familiar to users, feature-rich, and built on a strong technological backbone, we have been intending for quite awhile to develop support for delivering digital video in-house.

When you view a video from the Duke Chapel Recordings, you’ll see a “poster frame” image of the featured speaker. Click the play button to begin (of course!) and the video will play within the page. Watching the videos is a “pseudo-streaming” or “progressive download” experience akin to YouTube. That is, you can start watching almost immediately, and you can click ahead to arbitrary points in the middle of the video at any time. And while you might occasionally have to wait for things to buffer, videos should play smoothly on desktop, tablet, and smartphone devices, and can be easily enlarged to full-screen. Finally, there’s a Download link right below the video if you’d like to take the files with you.

Behind the scenes, we are using the robust JW Player tool, for which the Pro version was recently made available by site-license to the Duke community by our friends in the Office of Information Technology. JW Player is media player software that uses a combination of HTML5 video and Javascript. It can play video from a streaming server, but as in our case, it can also pseudo-stream video over HTTP via a standard web server. Using HTML5 video, the browser requests and receives only the chunks of the video file that it needs as it plays. Almost all of the major modern browsers support HTML5 video delivering H.264/AAC MP4 content (our video encoding of choice), and a peek at our use statistics indicates that more than 80% of our users visit our site with these browsers. For the rest, JW Player renders a nearly identical media player using Adobe Flash.

We’re looking forward to hearing from our users and learning from our peers who are working with digital media to keep refining our approach. We hope to make many more videos from our collections available in the near future.

Post authored by Sean Aery and Molly Bragg.

Announcements, Collections, New Collections

Announcing 310 Newly Digitized Behind the Veil Interviews and a New Blog!

February 7, 2014 Molly Bragg

Duke Digital Collections is pleased to announce that we have published 310 newly digitized interviews in the Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South digital collection! The new interviews are specifically focussed on North Carolina residents. Although several regions are represented, many interviews focus on the Charlotte, Durham and Enfield regions of the state.

Visit the Behind the Veil Digital Collection

The North Carolina recordings were all digitized as part of the Triangle Research Libraries Network’s project “Content, Context and Capacity: A Collaborative Large-Scale Digitization Project on the Long Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina.” Publishing these recordings concludes this multi-year endeavor, which digitized collections from UNC Chapel Hill, NC Central University and NC State’s special collections holdings as well as Duke.

Prior to publishing the new NC recordings the Behind the Veil digital collection, contained 100 recordings. Although we were able to build on the existing collection without developing new technology we essentially QUADRUPLED the number of interviews available online!! The digital collection was created by digitizing the original audio cassettes and scanning any existing transcripts. The entire collection (over 1,200 interviews on audio cassettes) is available for research at the John Hope Franklin Center for African and African American History and Culture in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Visit the Devil’s Tale (the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library blog) for more details.

Speaking of blogs, you are looking at the brand new blog of Duke’s Digital Projects and Production Services Department. Visit Bitstreams to learn more about all the exciting and innovative digital projects at Duke University Libraries!

Notes from the Duke University Libraries Digital Projects Team