The Consecrated Eminence: Side Effects

The Consecrated Eminence

Side Effects When I was thinking about what I wanted to write for this post, it occurred to me to talk about my interaction with the collections we have here, outside of my official role as a software developer.  In my role here, I'm responsible for the images and metadata getting ingested into our digital asset management system and also keeping that website going day to day.   Thinking about this work made me ask myself the question: how has working here changed me? Or, better yet, what are the side effects of this position on my interests? Generally side effects are unwanted […] by admin on January 28, 2019

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The Consecrated Eminence: On Gleaning the College’s History Through Documents

The Consecrated Eminence

On Gleaning the College's History Through Documents Guest post by Zehra Madhavan '20 When I started working at Digital Collections as a Student Assistant during the spring semester of my freshman year, my understanding of Amherst College's history was limited to facts I had read about in pamphlets and bits and pieces of information I had picked up in various lectures and speeches; little did I know that I would soon be encountering countless documents and archival items that would shape not only the way I see the college but also the way I see my place in this community. The project I have been working on […] by Sarah Walden McGowan on December 5, 2018

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The Consecrated Eminence: No college is an island: Amherst College chooses Islandora

The Consecrated Eminence

No college is an island: Amherst College chooses Islandora Behind the letters, images, photographs, and other treasures on display in Amherst College Digital Collections is software. To the public, this software is largely invisible, with our user interface showcasing the discovery and display of the digital objects from Archives and Special Collections. Our underlying software infrastructure requires ongoing maintenance, upkeep, and upgrade as technology changes and our needs change. I'm here today to share a choice we've made for the future of our digital collections software, which is that we are going to start using Islandora in our software stack. This month we are beginning the process to migrate […] by admin on October 12, 2018

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The Consecrated Eminence: Charting the Divine Plan: Orra White Hitchcock in the World

The Consecrated Eminence

Charting the Divine Plan: Orra White Hitchcock in the World One of the things we often say about the archival materials we are digitizing and adding to ACDC is that we never know what researchers will do with our materials once we release them into the world wide web. The Papers of Edward and Orra White Hitchcock and Orra White Hitchcock's Classroom Drawings were among the earliest collections we made available through ACDC in late 2012/early 2013. It is amazing to see just how far Orra White Hitchcock's works have traveled since then, both digitally and physically. The news of the moment is that the largest exhibition ever mounted of […] by Mike Kelly on July 12, 2018

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The Consecrated Eminence: A Millennial in the Archives

The Consecrated Eminence

A Millennial in the Archives Guest post by Avery Farmer '20 When I visited the British Royal Observatory in Greenwich during a vacation in London this year, I was captivated by a series of rooms dedicated to a history of time. Not time, the grand spiritual and scientific setting of our own existence, but humans' attempts in the last 500 years to measure that constant force. On display were indecipherable jumbles of pendulums, springs, and gears, exposed or half-concealed by elegant metal dials, each new model claiming some slight advantage over the last. The placards described innovations like a redesigned spring that made an early […] by Sarah Walden McGowan on May 23, 2018

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The Consecrated Eminence: Building Collections and Connections

The Consecrated Eminence

Building Collections and Connections The work of digitizing archival and special collections material is not a "traditional" library activity. Times have changed in libraries. Change is a constant in our work - perhaps that is what hasn't changed. Change is in the evolving materials that cross the desk of our archivists and metadata librarians as they organize and describe what is before them. Change is represented in the digital files with endless strings of names and numbers that fill the hard drives in our digital studio and compose the content of our digital repository servers. Change is new, too, in that we no longer […] by admin on March 27, 2018

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The Consecrated Eminence: Bring your own viewer?

The Consecrated Eminence

Bring your own viewer? Lately I've been focusing on replacing/upgrading our zoomable image viewer in our digital repository.  The current version of the tool lacks a few features which folks have been asking for - one of which is rotation.  In an instance where you have a manuscript that has writing in two directions, being able to rotate the image is a highly desired feature. Having heard about this set of standards for image viewing, I started researching the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF).  I'll share a little bit of my learning with you here. Honestly, looking at IIIF made me start to dream.  We […] by admin on January 25, 2018

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The Consecrated Eminence: Welcome to the Bicentennial

The Consecrated Eminence

Welcome to the Bicentennial At the Amherst College Library, we've been preparing for the College's bicentennial in 2020-21 for several years. We've prioritized digitizing materials like the student newspapers, the yearbooks, and the catalogs because they contain a rich combination of data and anecdotes about the College, its students, its faculty, and sometimes its staff for a wide swath of the institution's almost-200 year history. We're aware that as the bicentennial approaches, many researchers, alumni, and other interested parties will want to dig in to the College's history, and having these materials online gives them faster and easier access to that history. It also […] by Sarah Walden McGowan on December 13, 2017

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The Consecrated Eminence: Repositories, repair, and system migrations

The Consecrated Eminence

Repositories, repair, and system migrations Innovation and disposability... Technology innovation is a given in our fast-moving culture of social media and disposable devices, yet innovation isn't all that drives the technology infrastructure underlying the systems we use everyday. In the library, we us many online resources driven by databases that organize, track, and deliver the content we need, when we need it. In some ways, a database is a lot like a library - books are on shelves, and we have a catalog that tells us where to find those books, and when someone comes looking for one we can help them find it. At […] by admin on November 29, 2017

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The Consecrated Eminence: Welcome - what are we doing here?

The Consecrated Eminence

Welcome – what are we doing here? In an effort to document and organize our work around building digital collections at Amherst College, this space will provide an avenue for sharing our work and connecting with the community interested in this work. This page includes background information on our process in building digital collections, where we will include technical and workflow information about how we go about making decisions in our work. This page will also include overviews of the various projects we are working on, with links to other relevant information where needed. We will also post entries here to document the work process, our thoughts […] by admin on November 8, 2017

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