Monday, December 2, 2013

Library digitization projects on the web today


In my searches, I found a couple of digital projects that were of interest to me.
 

I did enjoy looking through the Memorial University's Digital Archives. http://collections.mun.ca/index.php The first area that interests me is looking at the Western Star. My mother’s family is from the Deer Lake/Corner Brook area, so back in the early 1900 is when my Grand Parents would have only paid 2 cents per copy, per week or $1.50 per annum.
 
 
 
 

 Another section that I enjoyed was the Charles Sydney Frost Collection of photographs. I found the pictures to be very well kept. The pictures in this album were collected by Charles Sydney Frost during his service with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in the First World War. Most of the photographs were taken between 1914 and 1918. The majority of these men were from "B" Company
and it is likely that the photos of these men were taken while C.S. Frost presided over that company as Captain.

 

In my searches I also came upon the digital collection of the Edmonton Public Library. http://www.epl.ca/digital-content/ .  Here I found a couple of interesting areas within their digital content. The first one titled Theatre in Video under eVideos.  It provides more than 275 definitive performances of the world's leading plays (including the complete works of Shakespeare) & more than 100 film documentaries.

 

Dance in Video contains five hundred hours of dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the 20th century. These include the Het Nationale Ballet and the New York City Ballet. Selections cover ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance. Currently contains 710 works and 460 hours of video.


 

Another library digital project that I find to be very interesting with the University of Cambridge http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/ . Two areas of particular strength within their collection are The Foundations of Faith Collections, which includes important works from many religious traditions and The Foundations of Science Collection, which focuses on original scientific manuscripts, beginning with the papers of Isaac Newton and his contemporaries including Charles Darwin. You will also find a video describing the digitalized mathematical documents of Newton. The University of Cambridge has stated that they have produced this online resource so that their collections can be much more accessible to students, researchers and the wider public.


That's it for today!