Tag Archives: outdooradvertising

Digital Collections

Digital Dogs

In a recent feature on their blog, our colleagues at NCSU Libraries posted some photographs of dogs from their collections. Being a person generally interested in dogs and old photographs, I became curious where dogs show up in Duke’s Digital Collections. Using very unsophisticated methods, I searched digital collections for “dogs” and thought I’d share what I found.

Of the 60 or so collections in Digital Collections 19 contain references to dogs. The table below lists the collections in which dogs or references to dogs appear most frequently.

Digital Collection Number of Items Referring to Dogs
Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) Archives, 1885-1990s 91
Historic American Sheet Music 40
William Gedney Photographs and Writings 39
R.C. Maxwell Company Outdoor Advertising 27
OAAA Slide Library 24
Sidney D. Gamble Photographs 12
Emergence of Advertising in America 11
Hugh Mangum Photographs 10
Musée des Horreurs 9
AdViews 7
Ad*Access 5
John Paver Papers 5
Documentary Photographs of Early Soviet Russia 4
Broadsides & Ephemera 3
American Song Sheets 3
Michael Francis Blake Photographs 2
Italian Posters 2
Paul Kwilecki Photographs 2
Medicine and Madison Avenue 1

As you might guess, not all the results for my search were actually photographs of dogs. Many from the advertising collections were either advertisements for dog food or hot dogs. There were quite a few ads and other materials where the word “dog” was used idiomatically. The most surprising finding to me was number of songs that are about or reference dogs. These include, “Old Dog Tray” and “The Whistler and His Dog” from Historic American Sheet Music, as well as “A Song for Dogs” and “Bull Dog an’ de Baby” from American Song Sheets.

Here’s a sampling of some photographs of dogs from Digital Collections, and a few cats as well.

Kwilecki

Hugh Mangum Photographs


Sidney D. Gamble Photographs



William Gedney Photographs and Writings







Documentary Photographs of Early Soviet Russia

R.C. Maxwell Company Outdoor Advertising


OAAA Archives

Michael Francis Blake Photographs


Collections

Vacation, all We Ever Wanted

We try to keep our posts pretty focussed on the important work at hand here at Bitstreams central, but sometimes even we get distracted (speaking of, did you know that you can listen to the Go-Gos for hours and hours on Spotify?).   With most of our colleagues in the library leaving for or returning from vacation, it can be difficult to think about anything but exotic locations and what to do with all the time we are not spending in meetings.  So this week, dear reader, we give you a few snapshots of vacation adventures told through Duke Digital Collections.

Artist’s rendering of librarians at the beach.

 

Many of Duke’s librarians (myself included) head directly East for a few days of R/R at the one of many beautiful North Carolina beaches.  Who can blame them?  It seems like everyone loves the beach including William Gedney, Deena Stryker, Paul Kwilecki and even Sydney Gamble.  Lucky for North Carolina, the beach is only a short trip away, but of course there are essentials that you must not forget even on such a short journey.

 

 

K0521

 

Of course many colleagues have ventured even farther afield to West Virginia, Minnesota, Oregon, Maine and even Africa!!  Wherever our colleagues are, we hope they are enjoying some well deserved time-off.  For those of us who have already had our time away or are looking forward to next time, we will just have to live vicariously through our colleagues’ and our collections’ adventures.

Announcements, Technology

A New Dimension for Duke’s Digital Collections

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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 late a night chess match.

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.

A scent strong enough to eat!

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