'California as an Island' collection on KZSU’s Peninsula Report
Listen to Julie Sweetkind-Singer talk about the Branner Earth Sciences Library, her passion for maps and the 'California as an Island' collection on KZSU’s Peninsula Report.
Blog topic: Digitization
Scripting the Sacred: Medieval Latin Manuscripts
Digital Production Group takes great pride and pleasure in our role supporting the Library's many beautiful and informative exhibitions. The current exhibition is just that, displaying an array of startlingly colorful and detailed medieval manuscripts from the University's collection.
Please read more below, cross-posted from Special Collections. See also the recent article in the Stanford University News, Medieval exhibition spotlights Stanford Libraries' manuscript collection.
Scripting the Sacred: Medieval Latin Manuscripts
Scripting the Sacred, part one of a two-part exhibition of Western European manuscripts and fragments, showcases the medieval experience of reading. The exhibition will open Monday, September 17, in the Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda of Green Library, and continue through January 6, 2013.
Studying these texts involved not only the absorption of knowledge, but also practices of interpretation, identification, and devotion. By focusing on the exercise of reading, this exhibition explores "scripting" in diverse forms: scribal activity, scripted performances, and inscribed divine things (res divinae).
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Bible remained the paradigmatic text for reading and studying. The exhibited biblical items highlight different preferences pertaining to legibility. Indeed, scribes designed manuscripts to guide, assist, and sometimes challenge readers, as medieval versions of biblical commentary and patristic works exemplify. The liturgical genres on display contain written and visual markers that instruct readers in the proper performance of the Mass, music, and specific feast days. The text portion of the liturgy helped stage the clergy's ceremonial duties. Liturgical fragments with musical notation assisted ritual actors in the memorization of stylized speech. Both components show how customized manuscripts promoted reading aloud. Miniature prayer books and books of hours demonstrate a late medieval trend toward privatized and personalized lay devotion.
Bassi-Veratti Project Presented at Stanford Digital Humanties & Design Workshop
Cathy Aster, Michael Olson and Sarah Sussman (SUL Curator of French and Italian) were invited by ATS colleague Nicole Coleman to a Stanford Digital Humanities & Design workshop, "Early Modern Times & Networks" where they presented a summary of the Bassi-Veratti project on 24 August 2012. They led a discussion focused on the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) XML encoding of the finding aid to facilitate discovery of digitized content i
Music From Math - Digitizing the Works of Max V. Mathews
What's the first name you think of when considering the development of electronic music? Edgard Varèse? John Cage? Karlheinz Stockhausen? Now how about computer music? Max Mathews should be at the top of your list. While at Bell Laboratories in 1957, Mathews wrote the program MUSIC, ushering in an era of digital synthesis and composition. MUSIC went through many iterations, but its lasting influence can be seen in contemporary programs such as Max/MSP, itself named after the late pioneer.
Beautiful Books in the Stanford Digital Repository
Originally posted in ReMix: The Stanford University Libraries Newsletter
Sixteen volumes selected from among the Libraries’ “beautiful books” were recently added – approximately 1,400 images in all – to the Stanford Digital Repository, where anyone can
now view Renaissance artistic visions of the fall of Troy, see the universe as Galileo showed it to hiscontemporaries, hear Dr. Johnson pitching his idea for the first serious English dictionary, and admire one of the last magnificent examples of the golden age of English fine printing just before WWII. As with all of Stanford’s rare and antiquarian books, the printed originals of these digitized volumes are cataloged inSearchWorks and can be requested for viewing in the Special Collections reading room. Now, via each item’s PURL (persistent uniform resource locator, which ensures that these materials are available from a single URL over the long term), researchers can work with digital as well as original printed editions. Scholars have discovered, though, that each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and often find it useful to consult both in their work.
California as an Island Collection – Sheet Map Digitization Complete
The Digital Production Group’s Map Scanning Lab has successfully completed the digitization of 500 antiquarian sheet maps depicting California as an island.
New Digital Production resource - Image Defects page
The latest version of the Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources Quality Assurance Image Defects page is now “live” and made freely available to the cultural heritage and library communities.
This is a long-awaited tool that serves a range of production, development, and training needs. It includes sample images of common (and uncommon) defects, causes/sources, and potential remedies.